The Opposite of Carnage
by Rater202
Summary: A strange anomaly, another universe, and now there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of strange capes popping u all of a sudden and a young girl who idolizes heroes and her alien parasite have latched onto her. What is poor Taylor to do? Rated for language. Rewrite in progress.
1. Chapter 1

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Director Piggot sighed. The City of Brockton Bay, the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in North America, had, in the last week, become an even more chaotic and violent place. It'd started the previous Sunday when what was best described as a strange light show and a handful of explosions had been reported throughout the city, with similar phenomena in other parts of the country. The following day, Rune and Victor of Empire Eighty-Eight had been found dead, Rune impaled on a street sign and Victor, identified by the bounty that the Empire had placed on the head of the killer, inside a crushed sedan. Two Days later, Skidmark had been found entirely exsanguinated, as had several homeless people over the last few days in an apparent spree-killing by an individual the PRT had dubbed "Nosferatu", based on a description from a witness who described the killer as resembling the vampiric antagonist of the film. And then there was Lung's new pet...

At the very least, Director Piggot wasn't the only one who had to deal with the sudden appearance of murderous new capes. The news had broken on Wednesday of an, exact quote, "really fat man," who had murdered two civilians while robbing a Wal-Mart in a suburb of Los Angelos and had managed to escape a fight with Alexandria herself by, quote, "being too fat to hurt with punches." Director Armstrong in Boston had contacted her and requested to borrow Armsmaster for a few weeks to help the Boston Team's local Tinkers create containment measures for a cape that had been designated "Muck," a breaker that could transform into and absorb mud and shape weapons from himself who had proven exceedingly difficult to defeat and contain. Most concerning, however, judging from the warning that had been sent to every PRT director, was that the Slaughterhouse Nine had picked up a new member: An amorphous, barely humanoid creature calling itself "Blood Bath." From what had been shown, the creature was a homicidal man-eating monster obsessed with chaos and, judging from the relative brutality of the appearance of the Nine where Bloodbath had debuted, it and Jack slash were feeding into each other's psychoses.

The director finished pondering the warning that had been sent to her and turned away from her computer monitor back to the paperwork that she needed to finish before she could go home for the evening when she received a call.

' _This had better be important_ ,' she thought to herself. "Yes?"

 _"Armsmaster reporting in,"_ came the Local Protectorate leader's voice, _"Director. I've got good news, what might be good news_ , _and some bad news. I'll need you to meet me_ at _the infirmary."_

Director Piggot sighed. "Why? What's going on?"

 _"Lung has been defeated and captured,"_ Armsmaster explained, _"and we have two new prospective Wards who were both heavily involved in the capture, but Jorōgumo escaped into the city and one of our prospective Wards needed medical attention. The other refuses to leave her side."_

"Of course," Director Piggot was more or less directly in charge of Wards ENE. She didn't strictly speak have to do everything involving them, of course, but everyone who she could delegate to had already gone home for the evening. "I'll be there in ten."

She quickly finished the topmost sheet of the stack of papers she was working on before getting up and making her way to the infirmary. After an uneventful walk, she found herself walking in on a tall, lanky girl in a solid black costume and mandibled mask with yellow eye lenses sitting on an infirmary bed while one of the doctors on staff was examining her left arm, which appeared to have been burned fighting Lung. Part of her skintight outfit appeared to have been melted off and an obvious chemical burn was visible on the portion of her chest that was so exposed.

"All that effort to make this costume," the teenager said, "and it gets ruined my first night out."

"Miss," said the doctor, "you have a third degree burn with burnt silk stuck to it and I'm honestly not sure if I have anything on hand to treat this with without making it worse." The doctor pondered for a moment. "Actually, we should probably have a dedicated burn ward on site here and on the Rig, for this exact situation."

"Duly noted," the Director said, stepping into the room. She then turned to see Armsmaster standing quite professionally up against the wall. "I take it that Miss..."

"Still working on a name," the burned girl supplied.

"Well, I take it that the young woman with the burns is one of the potential new Wards," the Director noted that the young woman flinched, "but where is the other one?"

Armsmaster gave an uncharacteristic smirk, then pointed to the ceiling. The director looked up just in time for a humanoid figure, gold with marbled veins of dark blue, to flip down from the ceiling and look at her. It was hard to tell from this angle, but the figure couldn't possibly be more than four and a half feet tall, and she was too thin. The odd coloration was matched by an odd, metallic sheen across the entire body. Long, unwashed hair hung from the top of the child's head, and solid white ovals served as eyes on an otherwise featureless gold mask.

"Hello there," the director greeted.

"Hi." There was an odd reverbation to her voice, as though someone else was quietly echoing her speech.

"Do _you_ have a name?"

"...Snuggles."

The director blinked. Well, it wasn't the strangest name that Capes had given themselves. That had to go to Mime-King, a mover whose powers and costume had nothing to do wither either mimes nor kings. "Well, Snuggles, why are you standing on the ceiling?"

"Wouldn't you, if you could?" The director blinked in response.

"...You're not _wrong_... But why don't you come down?" The director looked to see if there was a chair or spare bed to sit on. She had the feeling that this would be a long conversation.

"Okay." The child said reluctantly before literally jumping from the ceiling to the floor, landing on all fours. The Director noted the child's apparent superhuman reflexes.

"Now... Do your parents know that you do this?" From the corner of her eye, Emily Piggot saw Armsmaster grimace.

"My parents are dead." The child's posture subtly changed, she seemed to deflate.

"I'm sorry."

"Bad Men came. They had guns. Mommy and Daddy got shot and the bad men took me." The chid's tone changed. Before she sounded normal, but now it was like she was reading a script in monotone. She didn't "I didn't see where, 'cause I had a blindfold, but when were got there, they took some of my blood. A long time later they put tubes into my arms and legs and had a machine take something out of my blood. Then I met Mister Snuggles, then we tried to escape. There were lots of people with powers fighting. Then there was a boom, then I was here."

There was a pause, while The Director noted that the girl, perhaps unknowingly, had explained her trigger event. This "Mister Snuggles" was odd, since that was the name she'd given herself, but perhaps there was some master component to her power and she'd disassociated it?

"Where is here?"

That... was the last question anyone had expected.

"You're in the Parahuman Response Team East-North-East's base," the director explained, "in the City of Brockton Bay."

"I don't know what any of that means."

Obviously, the kidnappers had taken her from her home city. "Where are you from?"

"New York, New York," the girl responded.

"Then you'll know about Legend," Director Piggot assumed, "The Leader of the Protectorate?"

"What's the Protectorate?"

The black-suited girl on the bed cocked her head. "You've never heard of the Protectorate? The biggest team of Superheroes on in the country, led by the World Famous Triumvirate?"

"Nope!" Well, at least the girl sounded less shell-shocked. "They sound like the Avengers though."

"Who are the Avengers?"

"Um, the biggest team of heroes in the World?" The girl sounded just as confused as Emily felt with the Child's own responses. "Next you're going to tell me you've never heard of Captain America."

"Who?" Asked the burned girl.

"Seriously?"

"Not to interrupt," the Doctor said doing just that, "but... Miss, are you not feeling any pain at all?"

"Oh, no. This hurts like He... Like Heck," the bug masked girl said, "but there's more important stuff to worry about right now."

"Okay," the Doctor said, "look I can either commit you to the Hospital or I can call New Wave and ask to borrow Panacea... I get the feeling that you're not going to like being committed..." the Doctor left the room, grumbling about the last time he got the Dallons out of bed in the middle of the night.

"How can anyone not know about Captain America?" Snuggles asked. "He's been around since World War Two."

"Snuggles," Armsmaster said in a tone that indicated that he felt silly for actually using that as a name, "what year is this?"

"2016, I think. Why?"

"Are you familiar with the terms 'Earth Bet' and 'Earth Aleph?' or alternate universes in general?"

"Sometimes there are different versions of the same person at the same time," Snuggles commented, "is it like that?"

"That... When did you get here," Armsmaster asked? He seemed to be onto something. "Today is Saturday, so you'd have gotten here..."

"Sunday!" She answered. "Why?"

"Becuase last Sunday there were reports of strange phenomena across the country," Armsmaster carefully explained, "and shortly after a large number of strange Capes came out of nowhere." He looked thoughtful for a moment, as though trying to explain a truth that Piggot herself was realizing. "You've made mention of people who don't exist and historical events that haven't happened, and of Capes being around for decades longer than they have been," he continued, "not to mention that you've apparently traveled back in time. You don't seem like you're lying or delusional, and that means that the simplest answer is that you, and if my suspicions are correct the other strange arrivals, are from another universe entirely."

The gold and blue girl turned to the Blue Armored Tinker, then cocked her head. She was silent for a minute, then said: "We don't know how to feel about that."

"We?"

"Me and Mister Snuggles," the girl replied. "Mister Snuggles, wave hi." And then a four-foot tentacle came out of the girl's back and waved. "Yes, I'm happy now," the girl said to no-one in particular.

"...Your costume is alive?" The Director asked? She was having uncomfortable thoughts about Wet-Tinkers and flesh manipulators.

"He's not a costume," Snuggles replied. "He's a symbiote. He eats the extra chemicals in my body, I get superpowers. That sounds fair, right?" The tentacle retracted, "besides, he tried to help me get away from the bad people and he's my friend and he's telling me to stop calling him a 'he' because he's an 'it' but calling him 'it' sounds rude."

"Okay," the director said, "we'll be getting back to that later. Why don't you, and... Mister Snuggles and your friend over there tell us, in your own words, what happened tonight."

 _"Well..."_

*Flashback!*

Snuggles: "Hey, can I ask you where I am?"

Bug Girl: "I guess... Are you a Hero?"

Snuggles: "...Oh my Gosh, I get to be a hero! Wait, are you a Hero?"

Bug Girl: "Yeah."

Snuggles: "Ooh, can we be heroes together?"

Bug Girl: "Sure why not!?"

*Snuggles and Bug girl walk until they encounter a meany*

Meany: "Muhahaha I'mma kill all the kids and kick all the puppies!"

Bug Girl: "Not today you're not!" *Covers Meany in bugs.*

Fuzzy Blue Naked Lady with a bunch of extra arms and a scary face: *suddenly appears, spits on Bug Girl*

Snuggles: "Hey, spitting is rude." *suddenly grows a lizard-like tail with a scorpion-like tip.* "I didn't know I could do that."

FBNL: *gets kersmacked by tail*

Meany: *Turns into dragon and burns away all the bugs and roars really loud so it hurts Snuggle's ears, shoots fire at Bug Girl and Snuggles*

Bug Girl: *Gets burned*

Snuggles: *Gets scared. Kersmacks FBNL again then keeps kersmacking her and Meany because Bug Girl is hurt and even though it's scary because fire it's what Spider-Man would do.*

Bug Girl: *Keeps sending bugs after Meany and FBNL*

Meany and FBNL: *corner Snuggles, fire is everywhere and Mister Snuggles is freaking out*

Blue Guy: *Rides up on a Motorcycle and stabs Meany with a giant ax.*

Meany: *turns back to normal and falls asleep.*

FBNL: *Runs away*

*End Flash Back*

"And then he said something about food and wards and getting Bug Girl's burns looked at and then we came here and that's what happened," Snuggles said as the sockpuppets she'd been using to narrate the story reverted back to her "symbiote's" biomass.

"Not... Quite," the so-named Bug Girl explained, "Um..." She was cut off by the sound of loud gurgling coming from Snuggles' general area.

"Um, speaking of food," the gold and blue girl said, "I haven't eaten in two days."

"Perhaps then," Director Piggot said, "while we're waiting for Panacea and our doctor friend to get back, we should get you something to eat and then talk about the Wards program..."

Bug Girl flinched again.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Danny Hebert was feeling many things as he walked into the PRT building at one in the morning. Fear. Anger. Exasperation. Frustration. Taylor had snuck out in the middle of the night and the next thing Danny had heard of anything was a clerk from the PRT calling him, saying that they had Taylor but with no further details, and with instructions to give some passcode to the woman at the front desk. Danny knew that she was alive, and that left him pondering just what had happened to bring her into PRT custody. Danny loved his daughter very much, despite the recent distance between them, but he knew that if she'd somehow ended up one of Uber and Leet's minions, he'd have to kill her.

He was a bit taken aback when he saw the famed white and red robbed form of Panacea, escorted by her elder sister in white dress and crown, silently exit an elevator and leave the building. That... New Wave didn't work for the PRT, and Panacea was one of the strongest healers in the country. If she was in the PRT building at one in the morning, that had to mean that somebody was badly hurt. Danny felt a knot form in his stomach but walked to the desk.

"Excuse me," he said to the bored and tired looking woman, "I was told to tell you that 'the duck quacks at midnight.' "

The woman typed something into her computer. "Someone will be down to escort you momentarily," she said dispassionately.

Danny waited for five minutes or so before a uniformed man exited the elevator and walk to the desk. "Mr. Hebert?" he asked. Danny nodded and the man continued, "I'm Agent Smith, I'll be escorting you up to the Director's office."

That raised Danny's interest, and he began to ponder what could have happened with Taylor that required the Director's attention, but... He'd know soon enough. The Agent led him into the elevator and a few moments later through a hallway into an office with an obese woman behind a desk and a darkly dressed girl with very familiar black hair curled into a slouch in a chair in front of it.

"Taylor?" Danny asked, "are you alright?" She nodded. "Please tell me that you're a hero."

"...Yeah," she said with all the enthusiasm of a child being forced to take piano lessons.

"What's going on," Danny questioned. Then he noticed that his daughter's costume was missing a sleeve and, coming around to see her better, there was a huge hole melted through the torso, exposing the pale flesh of her lower chest and abdomen. "What happened?"

"Mr. Hebert?" interrupted the director, "are you aware of the bizarre events that happened last Sunday?" Danny nodded, and as he sat down the Director explained, in detail, a narrative about mysterious capes appearing en mass from what was apparently an alternate universe, of an abused orphan from the same world, and of this same child and his own little girl engaging Lung in a fight over some children. When she was finished, Danny needed to take a moment to calm down.

"Taylor," he said, "you're grounded."

"For what!?"

"Fighting Lung."

"But we won?"

"Irrelevant."

"If I may?" The Director interrupted, "there are some things that I'd like to cover before Snuggles gets back."

"Where is this girl, anyway," Danny asked.

"Oh, she made a comment about having not bathed in a year, so I had an agent take her to one of the locker rooms." The director answered, "but the matter at hand is that your daughter has agreed to join the Wards, and that means we need you on board." Taylor curled up upon herself, just a small bit.

"And if I say no?" Danny asked in response to his daughter's discomfort.

"Then as her legal guardian your no would be the end of this discussion, however, there are some extenuating circumstances," the director explained, "and I would strongly caution you to consider them carefully before you make such a decision."

"Extenuating circumstances?" Danny asked, his blood beginning to boil, "What? Are you trying to strong arm my daughter into your band of Child Soldiers?"

"The Wards aren't child soldiers, Mr. Hebert," the Director said with a look of offense upon her face.

"Really? How old is Vista? How often do they go out to fight the murderers, poison pushers, human traffickers, and literal Nazis that have been ruining this city? How often do they get hurt? How-"

"Dad!" Taylor interrupted, "it's not about that, and it's not about me, it's about Snuggles."

"What?"

"I... She kind of latched onto me," Taylor said after a minute. "I think that I'm the first positive human contact she'd had in over a year, and she more or less said that she won't join the Wards unless I do. She's homeless and probably isn't even from this universe." Taylor sighed. "I didn't want you to know about this. I didn't want to be a Ward-the last thing I need is more teen drama and more rules to follow. But if I join, then that's the best bet for that little girl getting a roof over her head, right."

"Well," the director corrected, "there are a few other options but they all amount to forcing it onto her. I'd honestly prefer to not give a traumatized child with super-human attributes and natural weaponry a reason to resent the Parahuman Response Team, however, even if she is the key to these strange appearances." The director paused for a minute where she seemed to be examining Taylor's costume. "Did you make that yourself?"

"Yeah," Taylor answered.

"With your powers, out of Spider-Silk?" the woman guessed.

"Blackwidow, yes," Taylor answered.

"That's a high-quality material, and costumes or underclothes made of it would be quite useful in this line of work. If we provided you with spiders," Director Piggot began, "would you be willing to make garments for the Wards and Protectorate? If so, since you'd be providing us with a service, you'd be able to negotiate a nonstandard contract that might sooth some of your concerns with joining, though that would have to wait until tomorrow at the very least."

Danny noted that Taylor relaxed slightly, which he took to mean that she was considering it, then said: "I'd need to see that contract before I let her sign anything."

"Of course," the Director agreed. "Now, and I know that this might seem quite the imposition, but would you consider fostering the child, if only for a few days? Given her obvious attachment to your daughter, then keeping them together... These are highly unusual circumstances that we have here, that's what I'm trying to get at, and..."

"You have about as much of an idea of what's going on as we do, don't you?" Danny couldn't help but ask.

"Basically," the Director admitted. "Normally an orphaned Ward would live on Base, but Snuggles isn't technically a Ward yet and... There are numerous legal reasons for why we can't foster her here until she's actually a Ward." The Director sounded annoyed. "We can induct her in a day or two, but she needs somewhere to stay tonight."

Danny thought about it, and looked to Taylor... the mask on her face made her expression impossible to read. "I suppose it wouldn't trouble us too much for a day or two, after that..."

"If this ends up becoming a permanent arrangement," the Director added, "well, okay, there would be a whole host of other legal issues with that, but we can compensate you for that. If it ends up becoming permanent."

There was a skittering sound from the hallway. The door flew open and a gold and blue blur flipped in and skittered across the ceiling. The figure stopped in the middle of the ceiling, revealing what appeared to be a little girl in a marbled gold and blue costume of some kind of metal that concealed her entire body, except for her long, slightly damp black hair. The child then stood up, still secured firmly to the ceiling, and looked down to the three people in the room.

"Guys," the child said, with some kind of echo to her voice, "I just found out I can make claws!" She spoke with all the enthusiasm of a child who just discovered that it was raining tacos. The child then threw out her hands, fingers splayed, and half-inch claws suddenly extended from her fingers. "Sorry, we can make claws."

"Snuggles," Taylor said. "This is my Dad," she gestured to Danny. "He's... Would you like to live with us for a little bit?"

"I-We would like that," the child answered. "But what about-"

"You can come back tomorrow and we can take care of getting you two-three," the Director self-corrected, "into the Wards then. You can meet the team, do some power testing, we'd go over contracts, and if there's time maybe talk with Public Relations about costumes. We could get that taken care of in one day if we're lucky." The director looked to Danny, "noon would be a good time if you can-"

"We'll be here by Noon." Danny agreed.

"Wait!" The child on the ceiling interrupted. "I um... I don't have clothes other than what Mister Snuggles can make. I used to have a hospital gown, but..." she made a rotating motion with her left hand. Then the outfit she was in suddenly shifted, and in an instant, she was dressed in a light blue t-shirt, a knee length dark blue skirt that, despite the girl still being upside down did not seem to want to fall, proper tights, and average looking sneakers. The girl, revealed to be Asian, looked down... well, up, at herself and exclaimed: "When were you gonna tell me you could do that!?"

"So my real name is Taylor," the girl in black said, "what's yours?"

"...Ashley."


	3. Chapter 3

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Bonesaw was annoyed. Sure, it was super duper fun when Bloodbath and all those other Alternate Universe Cape clones had shown up. Jack and the red slimy guy had become bros super fast and Bonesaw hadn't seen him that happy in a while, and yeah taking apart all of these other capes and figure out how their powers worked was mega fun and was giving the young girl so many great ideas for new art projects, but her current playmate wasn't behaving right!

"What do you know," some cancer-riddled brute said as she fiddled around in his chest cavity, "an interlude from the perspective of the author's favorite adorable little psychopath." Seriously, what the heck was he even talking about? And why wasn't he screaming or crying or saying bad words like her playmates normally did? It was weird. "So I think I see where that asshole is taking this," the man strapped to the office desk she'd been using as a lab table said. "You're gonna start experimenting with mutant and mutate DNA, splice yourself with a bunch of it, turn yourself into a cute Little Miss Sinister, and then a bunch of stuff I'm really vague on that'll end with you being redeemed-sorry, 'rehabilitated,' and then you become the adopted sister of the Rat Man's Little Miss Donut Steel, the twig with the martyr complex, or both... No matter how ridiculous it would be for that to happen."

Bonesaw was starting to get p-word. "Do you ever shut up?"

"My original didn't," the clone declared.

Bonesaw blinked, then stepped back and spent a little while rummaging through the drawers of the desk for whatever the previous owner kept inside. There, a stapler! A quick bunch of clicks later and all her patient could do was mumble, which was infinitely preferable to him blathering nonsense.

"Now, where was I?" she wondered to herself. "Oh, that's right!" She then summoned one of her special spider boxes to her and had it climb up and into the chest cavity of her latest playmate to take samples of blood and various tissues. The powers people had in that other reality didn't seem to have anything to do with the Passengers, not a Carona or Gemma in any of the brains she'd taken apart in the last week, and most of them seemed genetic or physiological, which was so cool! And if she could figure out how just a handful of genes could give people so many different kinds of powers, she could, she could... Bonesaw squealed. She couldn't help it, as this was all so exciting! There'd be nothing she couldn't make if she could figure that out.

As it was, she'd found a guy with sword arms, a guy with eye blasts, and a teleporter and was seriously considering some grafts and gene splicing with her latest playmate... after a lobotomy or two to keep him quiet, when she heard someone slithering up behind her.

 _"...For I must be traveling on, now, cause there_ 's _too many places I've got to see..."_ Oh gosh. It was singing, poorly, what sounded like a thrash metal version of Freebird. "Ah, there ya are." It said in its bizarre echoing voice.

"Good afternoon, Bloodbath," she said politely as she turned to face the red and black creature. From the waist up, Bloodbath looked kinda like a skeleton with fangs, clawed fingers, and spikes coming out of it's back, but from the waist down it was more like a slug. The dozen writhing tentacles coming out of various parts of its body gave it a creepy chaotic look-it and Crawler had taken to arguing over which of the two was more handsome. "What do you want?"

"I had a talk with Ol' Jacko," the monster said, "we're headin' to Chicago. Clone of my 'riginal's Daddy-Son popped up there, fightin' a wizard. I want to kill it."

Bonesaw very deliberately decided not to ask what Bloodbath meant by "Daddy-Son." "Okay, just let me finish here."

"Nah, we leave in ten minutes," the creature said. Bonesaw didn't think that was fair. She was in the middle of an art project and if they had to leave in ten then she wouldn't be able to let the blood on her arms dry and peel it off like she liked to do. She supposed she could throw the guy in a freezer or something and finish with him later, but-

"Ahh fuck, it's a cheap knockoff of Cletus/Wade!"

Bonesaw blinked. "How did your mouth get unstapled?" She asked without turning around. "And don't swear."

"Plot hole," her captive answered.

Bloodbath grinned, and it's right fist grew and shifted into a giant hammer.

"Wait, what are you doing," the clone of some guy named Wade said when he saw what was happening. "You can't kill me, I'm Deadpool! People love me."

"No you ain't," Bloodbath said, "You're just a cheap knockoff like me and all the other monsters what got turned loose in this reality."

"No, no no no no I'm pretty sure I'm not immortal like the real Deadpool!" the Bound man said, "I've read your notes you asshole! If you kill me off in my introduction I'll spoil all the plot twists! Taylor's Origin is-" And then the clone of Deadpool's head was smashed to bits by a monster that grinned sadistically the entire time.

"Hey," Bonesaw whined, "I wasn't done with him!"

"Well that's too damn bad," the monster said, " B'sides, the real one'll probably turn up eventually. Bastard's worse than Wolverine. Now wash up, we're leavin'."

The red creature slithered away after that, and Bonesaw glared at it as it left. Bloodbath liked all the same things that Jack did, chaos and murder and making the world a more fun place one corpse or burned down house at a time, but Bonesaw HATED it. Bloodbath hadn't earned the right to be part of the family. He hadn't passed any tests, he'd just shown up, ate Cherish, and talked to Jack. He was mean to everyone but Jack and Crawler and he upset the family dynamic. He didn't belong and he was taking Bonesaw's daddy away from her!

Bonesaw sighed, made sure the samples she'd taken from the dead clone and her other playmates from the last few days were packed up nice and safe, washed the blood off her arms, and made to leave with the rest of her family, all the while trying to think of ways to make Jack understand that they didn't need that _damned_ slug.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Shadow Stalker grumbled. She'd been up late last night, had missed whatever excitement had happened with all the fire because she'd been waylayed by a duck-man of all things, and now Ms. Piggy had called her in for a surprise meeting on Sunday of all days. It was irritating, just having that sprung on her. At first, she was worried that someone had found out about her late-night solo patrols and ratted her out, but she dismissed the idea. She'd have noticed if someone had been around.

And that's why she found herself, in full costume... well, without her preferred darts, marching into headquarters at one thirty in the afternoon. She walked to the elevator but found that her entry was blocked by some goon.

"You're late," the faceless grunt said.

"Whatever."

She paid the man no mind as he stepped into the elevator with her, though grew concerned when he interrupted her attempt to head to Wards HQ and pressed the button for the gyms instead.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"You'd know if you'd been on time," the man chastised. "New Wards."

"Again!?" Hadn't they just gotten that Batterbro guy?

"Yes," the minion of the organization keeping her from heroing properly said. "Two of them. One's a Master, bug control in a wide area. The other's a bit of a grab bag with known Changer, Brute, Mover, and Thinker aspects. They're doing initial power testing, and the Director wants the team there making a good impression."

"What makes these two so important?" Sophia asked dismissively.

"I don't have all the details, Shadow Stalker," the agent answered, "but from what I've been told they helped Armsmaster bring in Lung last night."

Sophia Hess blinked behind her mask. This, this was something she had to learn more about. Armsmaster probably did most of the work, but still.

"I think I can find my way from here," Shadow Stalker said in feigned politeness. She stepped out as the door opened and just looked for the occupied gym. The PRT building was equipped with a variety of gymnasium spaces and exercise equipment, some of it a bit more... extreme than what even the best normal humans could safely use. The Rig was better-equipped for most things(the indoor race-track here was only half regulation size), but the treadmills in the cardio room were nice.

She found the team in the strength room. They, some girl in a cheap costume that didn't match her cool, edgy mask, some Agents, a clerk, and Armsmaster were watching a little girl in a skintight shiny gold and blue suit that looked like it was expensive as shit to make. The girl was lifting a six-wheeled military truck overhead. As Shadow Stalker walked in, she noticed that there were thousands of ants on the wall behind the mismatched girl. It was honestly kind of freaky.

The little girl was struggling just a bit but managed to set the truck down gently. "We think that's about the most we can do," she said in a weird two-in-one voice.

"And that's just over five tons, imperial." The clerk said as he wrote something on a clipboard. "Good job." The girl seemed to beam.

The people in the room all turned to Shadow Stalker as they noticed her. "You're late," Armsmaster said. It wasn't really a question.

"Yeah. Who are the newbies?"

The mismatched girl awkwardly raised a hand. "Um, I'm gonna be going with 'Weaver.' "

The younger girl brushed her visible hair, kept in a ponytail, back over her shoulder. "We're kind of fighting the PR people on our name right now."

Sophia blinked behind her mask again. "Why..."

"Partially because there are two people in here," the blue and gold girl answered, "and partially because the PR people said that talking like this was creepy and we're mad at them right now." There was a pause. "Okay, I'm mad at them. Mister Snuggles doesn't care."

"To be fair," Weaver said, "you two were discussing whether or not to eat their brains."

"No," the girl said, "Mister Snuggles suggested threatening to eat their brains and I said no... We've been over this. Because it's disgusting."

Shadow Stalker was actually beginning to regret not showing up on time. "Okay," she asked, "I clearly missed something big. Anybody have the cliff notes?"

Clockblocker pointed to the nameless girl. "She's from another universe and her costume is an alien."

"He was born on Earth," the center of attention corrected. "Yes, I know you're an 'it,' not a 'he.' you don't have to keep saying it... Because it's not nice to call people 'it.' "

"We can catch Shadow Stalker up on the situation later," Armsmaster said, "we need to finish the evaluation before two."

"Right," the clerk agreed. "That's speed, strength, durability," it was then that Sophia noticed that Aegis, current Wards leader dressed in rust red, appeared to have a broken arm, "I think that's it unless she wants to try a sparring match. We can do more in-depth evals once everything's official."

"What's a sparring match?" How old was this kid?

"Uh... You fight someone to show off how well you can fight," the clerk explained, "or to learn how to fight better."

"We don't want to hurt anybody with we don't have to," the girl explained, "well, I don't."

"We usually stop a spar before it gets that bad," an Agent supplied. "Usually nobody gets hurt."

"We guess that would be okay then," the girl answered reluctantly.

And so everybody left the weight room for the sparring room. On the way, Shadow Stalker found herself walking next to Weaver. "So, what's the story with you and her?"

"I ran into her last night," Weaver said simply, "I was her first positive contact in a year, she latched onto me, we ran into Lung, he was talking about killing kids, I swarmed him with bees and spiders, that spider-woman he recruited showed up and ruined my costume, the four of us fought, Armsmaster showed up and tranqed Lung, and now we're Wards." She didn't sound too happy about that last part. Shadow Stalker could relate. "Also had to tell my Dad about all of this. Didn't want him to know, but he managed to negotiate a custom contract for us, so mixed blessing."

"He a lawyer?"

"I'd rather not say. I want to keep my identity secret for a bit."

"Okay. So, what makes you special enough for a custom contract?"

"Spider-silk. I made my original costume myself," Weaver explained, "it's why we settled on Weaver. The equipment department agreed to get me Darwin's bark spiders if I made gear for the other capes. In exchange, I get an extra 25% on my paycheck, they're going to see about getting me on the Arcadia waiting list and put me into the vocation program thing early, and I can quit at any time for any reason with only twenty-four hours notice and take Snuggles with me. Did you know that pound for pound, the silk of a Darwin's bark spider is ten times as durable as kevlar?"

"I did not," Shadow Stalker answered. She made a note to be nice to Weaver. She wasn't quite sure what to think of her yet, Weaver and the other one seemed to be going back and forth on the scale of how hardcore they were, but a super-kevlar silk costume sounded really useful, especially for her private patrols "Snuggles?"

"Apparently, where she's from, people with living costumes use the name of the costume as their Cape name," Weaver explained, "but PR doesn't think that people would take a Cape called Snuggles seriously."

"They've got a point."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, she's got something to do with the weird stuff last week and the sudden influx of strange new capes. She offered to help, so she's got more or less the same deal I do. Well, the school stuff is different."

They'd gotten to the sparing room, which was basically just a room with a regulation Olympic wrestling mat. "Okay, we've got fifteen minutes," the clerk with the clipboard said. Or maybe he wasn't a clerk? He was dressed like one, at least. Shadow Stalker really didn't care. "that gives us enough time for a quick round, any takers?... Not you Kid," he said when Kid Win raised a hand. "We haven't tested how well she holds up against laser fire yet." The girl with the ridiculous name took a step away from Kid. "Not Aegis either."

"Actually," Armsmaster interrupted, "he should probably go to the infirmary and get his arm checked."

"I'm fine," Aegis replied.

"Do I have to order you?" Aegis left.

Nobody else was volunteering. It kind of made sense. Gallant's power worked on emotions. If the costume was alive and as smart as Snuggles (Sophia resisted the urge to scoff at the name) implied it was, then it probably had its own freaky alien emotions. Vista's power was a good one, for such a little brat, but it wasn't good for finding out how well an opponent could fight, now was it?

"Hey," Shadow Stalker said as she noticed something, "where's the other new guy?" Set the Brute on the other Brute, made perfect sense to Shadow Stalker, but whatshisname wasn't here.

"Browbeat had a previous appointment that he couldn't get out of on such short notice," Armsmaster explained, "he'll be by later today to meet the new recruits."

Shadow stalker grumbled. "A hell, I'll do it," she said while stepping forward. Besides, it would give her a chance to see what the kid was made of. She forced her crossbows into Kid Win's arms. "Don't drop them" and then stepped into the ring. She figured that the tranqs and blunted tips they had her using would be useless if Aegis broke his arm punching the kid.

The kid walked into the ring and seemed a bit nervous. She made two fists-thumb inside the fingers, like an idiot-and assumed what Shadow Stalker could best describe as the "nerd about to get their ass kicked because they think they can fight" stance.

The guy with the clipboard, whatever he was, clearly wasn't a referee. He just said "start when you're ready," and took a pen to his board.

Shadow Stalker was smart enough to let the kid attack first. She knew it was a spar, but if people thought she was too eager to beat up on a kid they might get suspicious of her and she wasn't going to fuck up no-Holy shit that kid was fast.

It was all Sophia could do to avoid the horribly impractical leap and kick. The kid's follow up punch was easier to avoid. The kid was fast-faster than her, but she was a complete amateur when it came to fighting-Shadow Stalker could see everything coming from miles away. She got behind the brat and made to shove her but the girl ducked. Shadow Stalker jumped and shifted to her shadowy breaker state to glide to the edge of the ring, just in time to avoid a kickback from the child.

"Why do you do this?" Shadow Stalker asked.

"What?" the strange girl asked while turning to stare, confused, at Shadow Stalker.

"Why be a hero?" Shadow Stalker clarified. "And don't stop fighting just because we're talking, if I were some psychopath that would have gotten you killed." Sophia confidently walked closer to the middle of the ring.

The girl answered. "We're strong. Power, responsibility. Even if I didn't want to be a Superhero and help people, which I do, I'd have to." The girl then jumped at Shadow Stalker.

Again, blatantly telegraphed. Shadow Stalker was able to sidestep the leap, and then it was pretty easy to grab the girl and flip her onto her back. "You suck."

Shadow Stalker broke and glided away again to avoid the girl flipping up. "That was rude."

"It's the truth," the vigilante said. "People have this idealized, cartoony view of heroes," she explained. "Just the big strong guy in the colorful costume here to save the day from the crooks and thugs. That's not how it goes." Shadow Stalker dodged around the charging girl. At least she could learn. "This world is a shithole, full of killers and psychos and rapists." The girl tried to punch Shadow Stalker, who again saw it coming and managed to dodge even with the child's greater speed. "There are two kinds of people in this world: survivors and victims," Sophia explained, "predators and people too weak to keep from being preyed on."

The girl had claws now. Instead of punches, she was trying to claw Shadow Stalker up. "You talk too much."

"I'm just telling it the way it is," Shadow Stalker countered. "And you can't even land a hit on me. You're weak, you're so fast, so powerful, but it doesn't matter if you can't use it."

"Shadow Stalker," Armsmaster said sternly, but the vigilante paid him no mind.

"If you can't beat me," she said, "then how are you going to get the orphans out of the burning building?" Dodge a swipe. "How are you going to pull the mother of two out of some psycho's firing line?" Shift into shadow and glide to avoid a leap. "Save a little girl from kidnappers?" The girl was trembling. For a second, Shadow Stalker thought she saw the line of a too-wide mouth on the girl's mask "Hey look, Bonesaw the medi-tinker has got your friend Weaver over there cut open and strapped to a table. She's taking things out of her and putting other things in and whoops, your friend is dead and her corpse was used to make a monster because you weren't strong enough to save her."

What happened next happened in just a few seconds. Four nine foot tentacles erupted from the girl's back, three grasping claws a piece, which surged forward as she lept one last time, quicker. There was less thought in it. The vigilante didn't see it coming, and two tentacles to each side made it harder to dodge. The next thing she knew, Shadow Stalker was flat on her back with an angry child kneeling on her chest and pinning her to the mat by her wrists. Honestly, the girl's vice grip actually kind of hurt. The room was dead silent. Shadow Stalker laughed. "There we go. Was that so hard?"

The girl let go, stood up, and left the ring, tentacles vanishing into her back as fast as they'd appeared. "Are we done now?" she asked no one in particular in a weird, echoing monotone.

"Yes, we are," Armsmaster said. "Willis, did you get what you needed." The clerk or whatever nodded. He had a weird look on his face. "Someone take the new recruits up to meeting room B."

Clockblocker raised his hand a bit too fast. "I can take them." He then quickly ushered the two new girls out of the room-the younger one tightly holding Weaver's hand. "You know Ms. Snuggles, if you've got you're heart set on that name but PR won't let you have it, you could always do what I did..."

"This close," Vista said, holding her finger and thumb close enough that Shadow Stalker couldn't see the space between them. "We are this close to having enough girls for Boys vs Girls Cape Basketball. If they quit over your bullshit, I swear..." Sophia rolled her eyes behind her mask, then got up.

"Wards dismissed," Armsmaster said. "Shadow Stalker, don't leave the base until you're told to. I'll be discussing this incident with the Director, and then we will all be having Words about what is and is not appropriate mid-spar behavior."

"She had to learn sometime," was Shadow Stalker's only reply.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Opposite of Carnage**

She flew under her own power, one of the few things thought impossible for even her. Seven days, five hours, forty-five minutes ago. That was when the strange phenomena occurred. That was when infinite more possibilities opened up, and that was when, for the second time, she'd been granted an amazing power with the potential to save the world.

Well, sort of. Even with this amazing gift, she still couldn't solve every problem. But she could solve the most pressing one. She traveled through space, flying faster than light, to a barren planet on the far end of the Andromeda Galaxy-the farthest from the earth than anyone in this universe had ever been and arrived in just a few days. There was a dormant volcano, larger than any mountain on Earth. She landed at its peak and with a wave of her hand a smooth red gem buried deep inside sifted itself to the surface. She took it in her hand and felt the enhanced powers she possessed multiply even further.

With her powers so magnified, rather than fly she could simply teleport halfway across the universe to a self-sustaining non-orbiting space-station that thought itself hidden behind a transdimensional cloak. Specifically, she appeared in what was either a throne room or a massive office. The inhabitants, humanoids that were somewhere between roach and alligator, reacted with obvious fear to her sudden appearance, with much screaming in shouting in an odd, consonant-heavy language. Eventually, armed guards appeared, with high powered, apparently proton based, weaponry pointed directly at her. She merely raised her hand high in the air and spoke in their language. She didn't understand the strange words she said, but she knew that the information she wanted to convey was carried-how she came in peace, how her home was subjected to a major threat that had harmed countless others, and how she needed something that they had to save her own people and countless others. The apparent leader, their king, prime minister, governor, or CEO looked contemplative for a moment, then spoke. Again, she didn't know the words, but her powers translated. He wasn't sure why, exactly, she needed what she asked for, but as they used it simply as a simple decoration, he supposed she could have it if she left quickly before her sudden appearance attracted unwanted attention. He then took a smooth, light blue gem from a broach at his neck and handed it to her.

She thanked them and vanished. There were four more such gems, each with their own powers, but they could be retrieved later. Now was the time to act. She appeared back on Earth, one hundred miles away from her target. She took to the air and flew until she reached the airspace of an empty field somewhere in the midwestern united states, occupied by an indecisive, long-haired, glowing golden man.

Scion turned to face her, his expression blank, but confusion emanating from him along with the ever-present sadness. Confusion about her, and confusion about everything else. It seemed that even he was confused or concerned by the sudden influx of universal travelers. That confusion would benefit her. She approached him and used the powers of the blue gemstone to communicate with the Golden Entity in a way more clear and more effective way than any conversation in any language.

She and the Entity conversed this way for hours-at first, the entity was taken aback, even hostile, but she was able to convince him to hear her out. They spoke of the Earth, and of the Entities' homes. They spoke of the thousands of perspective known to each race, what each race valued, and honestly, genuinely came to understand each other. It was then, as many film crews began filing in and filming their encounter, that she showed the Entity the red gem and explained to it exactly what it was, what it could do in the hands of someone with just enough human creativity and ingenuity and the right powers. For once, in its decades-long existence, the avatar known as Zion demonstrated an emotion called Hope.

She explained to the Entity a plan. A plan that, with the right steps, could satisfy everyone involved, and asked only that he simply rest and be patient for, what to his own species, was but a short while. And after hours of completely silent conversation, Scion and Captain Universe parted ways.

She teleported, not across space, but across dimensional boundaries to another earth with only a relative few inhabitants, and found three people: Doctor Mother, Eidolon, and The Number Man. And, sensing that her enhanced power would fade from her soon, Contessa willed into existence a document detailing the steps that The Uni-Power Enhanced Path to Victory showed her for the second Path she ran after gaining her enhanced powers. The document was completed, her powers returned to their normal levels, and she adjusted her Fedora.

"Path to Neutralizing the Entity with minimal casualties," she said with just a hint of well-earned smugness, "six steps. Path complete. Now, we need Tinkers. As many and as varied in their specialties as we can get."

"Contessa," Doctor Mother questioned. "You've been gone for a week. Please explain what happened."

"It's complicated. But first." She tossed the red gem to Eidolon. "Hold on to that and don't lose it. It'll only work on Earth Bet, however."

"Seriously, what happened?"

"In exactly five minutes," Contessa said, "the Entity will voluntary enter a long-term state of hibernation. And now we need to develop intergalactic travel."


	6. Chapter 6

**The Opposite of Carnage**

"I fold," Vista said, throwing down the hand of cards she'd been holding.

"Good," Ashley said as she put down her own cards, "because we've got nothing."

"Oh, I had a pair!" Vista exclaimed in frustration. "It's not fair, your mask covers your whole face."

Ashley laughed. _"You've got to know when to hold em... Know, when to fold em..."_ The assembled Wards, consisting of myself and the entire Arcadia division, all turned to stare at her. "What? A girl from New York can't like country music?"

"You're weird sometimes," Clockblocker said after a moment.

"Nuh-uh," Ashley replied, "this whole world is weird. There's only one kind of superhuman, no magic, stuff I take for granted never happened, it's five or six years ago, _Splatoon_ hasn't come out yet, and Johnny Cash never did _I Won't Back Down_ or _Hurt_."

I laughed. Being a Ward wasn't as bad as I thought. Dad had been acting a bt weird The rest of the team, other than Shadow Stalker who I hadn't seen much of, had all at least tried to be nice and had respected my privacy. The PRT's vocational program consisted of basically leaving halfway through the day and either hanging out at Wards HQ, at the PRT's monitor room on Monitor Duty, or shadowing a hero or PRT Agents on a patrol. If there was an emergency we might get sent out to help, but that was part and parcel of being a hero.

Well, Ashley and I had to talk to PR again

Now, the program hadn't been set up for Winslow, so I still had to do the work for the classes I was missing, but doing my homework in Wards HQ was preferable to sitting in class at that shithole. I dotted a few i's and crossed a few t's and was done. Then I switched from homework to another notebook and started working on the design of my new costume. PR had wanted to design it, but when I'd pointed out that I was the only one who could make spider-silk costumes and wasn't going to make a costume for myself that I didn't like, they relented. Well, they had some suggestions. 'Less edgy than the original costume,' was the primary one. Shadow stalker only got to keep her costume because she already had a rep to her name and she refused to be rebranded. I was thinking white, with purple or black accents and maybe ditching the mandibles on my mask, since they looked a lot creepier than I was intending. Also real armor panels instead of ones made of bugs. PR was going to present Ashley and I as a team, resulting from her attachment to me and our simultaneous joining(She was reluctantly considering the compromise name "Cuddlebug,") and had suggested some kind of shared image between us-especially when they'd found out that Mister Snuggles could change color and texture. Ashley had gotten really excited all of a sudden and suggested a spider-emblem. she'd made the dark blue part of her symbiont form a couple of different ones and we'd settled on a simple stylized one, a fat oval with eight bent legs, right over the sternum and just big enough to draw attention. I was gonna have to double up on chest layers and make sure to armor up my torso in case someone with a gun decided to take a shot at the obvious target.

I'd finished a rudimentary sketch of what I was thinking-it'd be a while before my spiders would get here, plenty of time to finalize the details-when I noticed my surroundings again.

"... _sapiens superior_ are born with an extra gene that activates and enhances dormant mutations," Ashley was explaining in a tone of voice that said she was paraphrasing something from a textbook, "while mutates get superpowers from a mutation that happens after they're born. Like The Fantastic Four. They went up into space, got hit with Space Energy, and now they can stretch, turn invisible, light on fire, and be made of rocks. And then there are people who have powers because they're aliens or ancient gods and stuff."

"How can one gene give people superpowers?" Kid Win in his red and gold powered armor asked.

"Uhdunuh," Ashley said with a shrug. "How can a bump on the brain?"

"So, are you a mu _tant_ or a mu _tate_?" Vista asked.

"Oh no," Ashley corrected. "I don't have powers without Mister Snuggles. Wait. Mister Snuggles says I have extra chemicals in my blood, so maybe? I don't know. Anyway, superhumans are like, normal here, right? They're just a thing?" Ashey sounded confused. "It's not like that where I'm from. They've been around for like ever, but they're still a big deal and there are people that don't like them. Especially mutants for some reason, but Mommy and Daddy never liked it when I asked about mutants and none of my history lessons covered them." That... I was starting to get suspicious and was wondering if her ending up in this universe wasn't for the best.

I noticed that Aegis was on the phone. "Alright." He hung up. "There's a robbery at Brockton Central," he said, "they suspect villain involvement and the Protectorate is a bit busy and they want us to handle it. Any takers?" Vista in her striped green skirt and breastplate, Clockblocker in solid white and clocks, knightly Gallant, Browbeat in blue diamonds and Kid Win all raised a hand or else answered in the affirmative. "Weaver? Snuggles? Not interested?"

"Is that such a good idea?" I asked, "we haven't been presented to the public yet, and I'm still using the loaner costume." Loose plastic green tights, slightly ill-fitting black chest and shoulder armor, and the soft soled shoes from my original costume did not a compelling image make.

"Oh, you'll be fine," he said reassuringly, "there's nothing wrong with an early bird appearance before your official debut, and if anybody asks just say it's a temp. Besides, with your power, you could bug the bank," oh good, my first pun, "and let us know if any hostages are okay."

Well, when he puts it that way... I stood up, and in the time it took me to walk to the door, Ashley had already flipped from her seat and landed at the end of the line. As we left, I noticed Galant making a call.

 **Cuddlebug, cuddlebug, she'll run up and give you a** - _don't get cute with the scene transitions, asshole._

(damn it wade)

Okay, turns out that plastic tights are really useful to have when it's raining. We'd arrived and were lined up in the street outside the front of the bank. Most of us were standing, but Aegis was in the air about five feet about the rest of us and Kid Win was on his hoverboard. Ashley was crouched down on all fours, like when she was climbing the walls or ceilings.

I did my thing, pulling on the bugs in the area, checking for how many were already in the bank. A couple o ants... a surprising number of spiders... I'd have to pull more from outside to get a clear picture, and that would take a minute.

"Guys," Ashley said all of a sudden. "Mister Snuggles says that he can sense that one or two of his others hosts are nearby."

"In the bank," Aegis asked?

"He doesn't know. He says that he doesn't have very good precision with that."

"I'm starting to get visual," I said. There are five people and what looks like some kind of anim-"

"Oh, what the fuck!?" came a voice from the far side of the street. We all turned just in time to see five figures, a muscle guy in bike leathers with a skull on his helmet, a waifish boy dressed like a fop, a blond in purple with a domino mask, a redhead in street clothes, a fur collar, and a plastic dog mask, and a middle school aged brunet in street clothes, no mask were all getting out of a van. "There is no way in hell you knew about this ahead of time and somebody else is robbing the bank." She said, suddenly changing tracks.

"Um," Ashley said, "there are a _lot_ of squirrels around here."

Then the doors of the bank flew open, and what appeared to be a woman in a gas mask stepped out with a familiar brown-haired Teenager held in front of her.

"Panacea!" Gallant shouted. The healer, the girl who'd fixed my arm the other night, had a look of unmistakable terror on her face and was wearing a vest that appeared to have some kind of devices built into it, with a card in her hand.

"Read the card sweety," the gas-masked woman said in a distorted voice.

"Attention heroes of Brockton Bay," Panacea read off, "there are powerful bombs hidden all over the city. If Lung is not released from custody within twenty-four hours, please don't do this!"

"Stick to the script!"

"If Lung is not released within twenty-four hours, then they will be set off at random and the Genius Tinker Bakuda will wage War upon the Protectorate with the Azn Bad Boyz and her hired Mercenaries."

A handful of young Asian men dressed head to toe in the Bad Boyz colors walked out, as did a grown caucasian man with rich black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was dragging Lung's pet spider-woman behind her on a leash. She glared at me with six hateful eyes.

"Speaking of mercenaries," the woman who I presumed to be Bakuda said. She grunted, snapped, and then-

"Look out!" Ashley shouted before pushing me away. It was quick, but when I came back to my senses a young woman with brown hair, sharp claws at her finger-tips and a long, bushy tail was crouched where I'd been standing.

"You've just got to go jumping the gun, don't you," said a voice that was coming out from inside the bank and... Was that a duck? God damn, that was a duck man holding a machine gun.

"She gave the signal, didn't she?" half asked, half declared the squirrel woman.

"We," Ashley said after a moment of silence, "are _screwed_."


	7. Chapter 7

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Oh gosh, this was bad, this was really bad. Really, really bad! I didn't know much about a lot of heroes, but I knew a little bit about most of them and Squirrel Girl had never lost a fight ever, and... Okay, this probably wasn't the real Squirrel Girl. Mister Snuggles had said that he heard the bad people talking about clones, and I told that to the PRT people the other day when they asked my help with the bad guys who'd showed up since I got here.

 _"Subject host need focus,"_ Mister Snuggles whispered in my ear. He was right, we were surrounded by bad guys.

"We know some of these people. Well, who they were cloned from. That," I pointed to the most dangerous one, is-"

"There are squirrels in my armor!" Clockblocker suddenly screamed while dancing around like he was on fire. That was fast.

"Squirrel Girl. She can talk to squirrels and has all the powers of a squirrel."

There was a snikt-like sound. "And knuckle spikes," the evil Squirrel Girl said, offended and holding up her fists to show the little spikes. "Even the writers forget about the knuckle spikes, and I can say that because I didn't sign any contract."

"What are you talking about?" asked the clone of...

"That one's Howard the Duck. The real one is... Okay, I don't know much, I thought he was an urban legend." And then he shot me. "Rude." I mean, it bounced off, but still. "The one holding Naked Fuzzy Blue Spider-Lady's leash... I don't know his name, but I think he's one of Spider-Man's bad guys. He's normally dressed like a lion and he's some kind of hunter."

The other bad guys, the young ones with the girl that swore weren't doing anything... well, the scary one with the helmet and purple sweary girl were talking. "And I think the girl without a costume is one of the Runaways but I don't know which one."

"None of us know who the Runaways are," Taylor-I mean, Weaver said, "but thank you."

"Please, someone help me get the squirrels out of my armor!" Clockblocker shouted. He was now rolling around on the ground.

"Not it!" Vista called out.

"Attention Pipsqueaks!" Gas mask lady said, "you have five minutes to call the real Heroes and deliver my threat, or Panpan gets tossed back in the bank and she and all the hostages go boom. Maybe they'll be irradiated to death? Maybe they'll be transmuted into grape Jello?" She laughed as she held out a remote. "Four minutes no-"

There was a gunshot and the remote flew from her hand. I turned because the shot was loud, and purple-yelling-girl was holding a handgun. "By the way, she's bluffing. That vest has just enough regular explosives to take out Panacea and anyone right next to her, but even if everybody was huddled up it wouldn't kill everyone in the bank. I mean," she continued, "it would still be bad, but still. Perspective. It's a moot point, I destroyed the trigger, but... Oh, by the way-"

"Release the spider!" Gasmask lady said.

"That's not Bakuda!" Purple Girl finished, just the guy I think is one of Spider-Man's villains let go of the leash. Fuzzy naked blue Spider-Lady, instead of charging at the other bad guys, came right for me and Weaver with her weird spider-mouth wriggling. I was still holding Weaver from when I pulled her away from Evil Squirrel Girl, who was currently chittering something, so I was able to jump up onto a building to get away from her and stick to it by my feet while holding Tay-Weaver.

"Ashley," she whispered my real name, "set me down."

"But-"

"I can handle myself," she said. Wow, that was a lot of bugs down there. In the time it'd taken me to jump up, Evil Howard the Duck and one of the gangsters had taken their guns and started shooting but Vista did her thing that made everything all stretchy and bendy and twisty. The Spider-Lady who I didn't know who she was a clone of was fighting Aegis and Gallant and three really big, ugly dogs at the same time, the scary guy in the skull mask was trying to get squirrels out of his pants, the other members of his team talking about something. Bugs were fighting squirrel's all over the street, Browbeat was starring at the Hunter whose name I didn't know, who was looking to fight anyone else so it seemed, and Kid Win was shooting laser bolts at Evil Squirrel Girl and missing every shot.

"The Undersiders are talking about getting Panacea away from Not-Bakuda," Weaver said to me. "I want you to go back down, set me on the ground, and try to give them an opening."

I nodded. "Okay, we'll try." Me and Mister Snuggles. we climbed down and set Weaver on the ground. Then we jumped forward and tried to dive for gasmask lady, our claws out. Suddenly though, the hunter was between us and her and he punched us in the side. It didn't hurt, but it did send us flying over to that team of Badguys, the Undersiders(which was such a cool name!)

"You'll need more than your parasite and it's stolen powers to win here, child." The hunter said to us. "You're not even good prey."

"So, are you like a botched clone of Venom or something?" The girl who wasn't in a costume asked. She was looking at our new emblem.

"Not the time-" the blonde haired purple clothed girl started but we spoke before she finished.

"Not a clone," we said, "just like Spider-Man."

We flipped up and glared at the Hunter. _I_ glared at him. Something about him made me angry. I was about to try and attack him but then I noticed that all the squirrels were gone and that Weaver was sitting on Evil Squirrel Girl.

"Weaver beat Evil Squirrel Girl," I said in shock. "Oh my gosh, that is so cool."

 _"Inquiry?_ "

"Becuase the real one never lost! "

Anyway, focus, take out the Hunter and then help the not-so-bad-guys save the girl who fixed Taylor's burns from Not-Gasmask lady and then-

"Get the hell away from my sister!" I heard an older girl shout from nowhere. It was fast, a blur of white, and then healer girl was alone because Not-Gasmask Lady and the last gangster had been sent flying our way. The Gangster looked to be hurt really, really bad.

Not-Gasmask lady got back up. "Okay, Bakuda's plan is going nowhere. Time for plan B." Then she changed shape into a lizardy-goblin thing, a muscular one that I'm pretty sure was a he.

"Huh," the clone without a costume said. "She was a Skrull."

While this was happening, Browbeat managed to attack the Hunter and seemed to be keeping him kinda busy. There was gunfire, a lot of it. We turned to see that Evil Howard the Duck and the Gangster that was still up were shooting at a woman in a white dress with long blonde hair. She was just standing there, looking at them, but then she started stumbled and fell to the ground and it looked like she was bleeding and oh gosh this is bad, this is bad, this is really really bad, really bad. The healing screamed "Vickey!" really loud and it hurt our ears.

I sprouted my tail and jumped at the Skrull. She... He... They? The Skrull was the leader, right. Take the leader out and the other bad guys run away, that's how it works. We saw one of the monster dogs go flying while we were in the air but we didn't pay attention and we crashed face first into an invisible wall. The Skrull looked right at us and then burst into flames.

 _"Subject host need flee!"_ Mister Snuggles screamed at me. _"Extreme Danger, fire and heat!"_

The Skrull started shooting fire at us. Lots and lots of fire, scary fire. It was getting hot, and I was feeling dizzy. Mister Snuggles was still freaking out. This was worse than fighting the dragon, and-when did Weaver get here? We were surrounded by fire, and I could only see her and the flaming Skrull and Weaver and she was dragging me away from the fire and-The Fuzzy blue spider-lady jumped over the fire and ran at us, really fast. I, we, we could move, but it was still so hot. The spider-lady's mouth was wide open, she was right in front of me and running leaning down but-Weaver twisted me around, she got bit instead...

She fell. I fell. We were away from the fire now, I could breathe. Weaver was breathing, but she was hurt, and... Was the spider-lady poisonous? Panaseesaw's sister was shot, this... This wasn't right! I screamed and punched the spider-lady and she went flying away.

The Skrull had turned into a rocky, "The Thing" version of itself and was trading punches with the uncostumed clone... They were chatting, like friends.

"So the original you is in space-jail and the real Karolina is dating Lightspeed now, but I think there's a clone of her in this world's Boston if you're interested. You know, if you get out of this without going to jail."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that."

"Well, my teammate just snuck past you and has almost got the bomb vest off your hostage, so if you're planning to run now would be the time."

"Whatever, we all already got paid anyway. Keep in touch?"

"I'll try," and then the Skrull burst back into flame and flew away.

All of the bad guys except the ones who were helping us were gone... Well, except for the broken Gangster and evil Squirrel girl. I saw the Hunter running off across rooftops, but he was the last one.

The healer was out of her bomb vest and was kneeling had her hand on her sister and was crying. Part of me wanted to hug her, but then the sister got up and they hugged... there were still people hurt, Browbeat was on the ground, and Clockblocker and the Undersider guy in the skull helmet both probably had lots of scratches from the squirrels even if they'd finally gotten them out of their clothes and Weaver...

I picked Weaver up and carried her over to the healer. "Fix her." The Undersiders were leaving.

"Look, I," She said, still crying, "I need to touch skin-"

I turned W-Taylor around and showed where he costume was torn and her shoulder was bleeding. "Fix. Her."

She started pushing and shaking Taylor. "Miss. Are you awake? I need your permission to heal you."

My mouth was starting to feel funny. "Heroes don't need permission to save someone's life, you idiot! Fix her!"

"Look," the healer's sister, "you need to calm your tits-"

"If she dies we'll eat your brains!" We shouted. That was mean. We shouldn't have said it, it wasn't very heroic, but I'd already lost Mommy and Daddy. I'd just found Tayor, I wasn't ready to lose her yet. "Now! Fix! Her!"

The brown haired girl jammed her finger under the tear in Taylor's costume and started doing what she did to fix her while we held Taylor and tried not to cry. I ignored Mister Snuggles when he said: _"Subject Symbiont say it effective."_


	8. Chapter 8

**The Opposite of Carnage**

"...And that's where trying to examine the fabric of the cosmos for fun brought me," Valeria explained to the group of heroes she'd managed to assemble on such short notice.

"So," said the woman in a pink and white variant of a certain mercenary's outfit, "I just realized that this is a fanfic and my powers don't work in a purely text-based medium. May I be excused?"

"Really?" Replied the original Mercenary in his Black and Red. "I figured that an overpowered Self-Insert would thrive in fanfiction."

"Look who's talking, Mr. Meme-Merc. And aren't you supposed to be all despicable right now?" the woman asked. "And She-Venom-"

"Mania," corrected the person being referenced.

"Nineties-Edge McAnimehair over there," she said, pointing at... well, with all the belts especially it was an apt description, "isn't even supposed to have powers right now. What kind of author completely ignores part of the canon?"

"The kind that likes fun," Deadpool replied.

Valeria had to admit that she was kind of scrapping the bottom of the barrel here. "Yes, Gwenpool, you're excused." Valeria had asked Uncle Ben for help finding people, and he'd vanished trying to find Uncle Pete. Uncle Johnny was off doing something with the Inhumans, and well, Uncle Doom would probably have tried to use what she found to take over the universe which, while it would have been cool, would have very irresponsible for her to let happen. Probably.

"So long, suckers!" Gwen shouted. "Have fun taking orders from a four-year-old." She then climbed away, using suddenly appearing text that described the last few moments and Valerie's own thoughts on them as a ladder, vanishing into nowhere when she got to the top and taking her ladder with her.

"...That lying little..." Deadpool.

"So," Mania began, "is she Gwen Stacy, or..."

"No," Deadpool answered, "she's not."

"She has a point though," the symbiote host said, "when I was told Richards wanted my help with something, I was expecting the big one."

Valeria was about to protest that she'd more than proven her own genius when the mercenary spokeup. "Anyway, to coonviniently recap what you just finished explaining, while playing around you found a tear in the fabric of space-time, a bunch of dead clones of like, everyone ever, and several million dollars worth of Mutant Growth Hormone and now you want us to go into the other universe because you're pretty sure a bunch of clones are there and one of them might be an evil clone of your insanely over-powered brother."

"Yes," Valeria replied, "that's what I said. I'd like to see if Spider-Man turns up since he has experience with this kind of thing and it'll take time to build a device to safely transport everyone across the boundary, but-"

"I think we can help with that," came a familiar voice. Valeria turned to greet Uncle Pete, only to yelp and fall to the floor, for instead of Spider-Man, there was a woman in a white, black, and pink hooded spider-outfit and a cartoon pig dressed as Spider-Man. "Why does that keep happening?" Asked the pig.

"Because most people aren't used to talking pigs, Ham," the hooded figured explained. the pig then shrugged, then pulled a corndog from somewhere and ate it, causing the woman to shudder. "Anyway," the woman continued, "I'm Spider-Woman of Earth 65, this is Spider-Ham. We're here on behalf of the Web Warriors to ask the Reed Richards of the Multiverse if any of them know why Karn the Master Weaver suddenly discovered an uncountably large number of universal strands, and well, we can't find this world's Reed."

Valeria smiled as the implications of this event hit her. "I think," she said, "that _we_ can help _each other_."


	9. Chapter 9

**The Opposite of Carnage**

 _"...And with his lieutenant's assistance, Lung escaped from PRT custody,"_ the newswoman said seriously, _"but it wasn't a complete loss, as Brockton Bay's own Wards team, with a_ _little unexpected help, successfully prevented a tragedy when the hostage situation at Brockton Central, where Bakuda's threat was first declared, turned violent. No hostages were harmed, the villains, consisting of four new capes, one posing as Bakuda, were driven off save for one, who the PRT have dubbed Chitter, who was defeated by one of the newest additions to the team, Weaver."_

The Newscaster's voice became more upbeat, almost cutesy, _"Speaking of which, Weaver and her little sidekick The Cuddlebug have made their debut and will be presented at a press conference after the PRT is sure that the crisis is over, though I'm sure that they're happy that most of the encounters with the Azn Bad Boyz and their mercenaries ended with the Bombs disarmed, and that all the schools were checked and cleared for bombs overnight."_

Emma turned off the television. The woman was an idiot, who wanted to go to school? Anyway, she had to get going, she needed to get to that shithole Winslow and she was meeting with Sophia on the way.

"Bye Daddy," she said as she passed her father. He smiled and waved her out with a request to "be careful." He was working on something involving a little kid as a favor to Mr. Hebert, his best friend and the father of Emma's weakling ex-best friend. Emma had no idea what kind of trouble the Heberts were in or how a little girl was involved, but she hoped that she could use it to torment Taylor if she learned enough of what it was. Her father was talking to Mr. Hebert over the phone as she left, reassuring the other man about something.

On her way to her and Sophia's meeting spot, she got a bit curious and impatient and sent off a text.

 _Hey hero, what's up with the newbies?_

Sophia replied after a few minutes.

 _They're confusing, they keep giving mixed signals._

 _Weaver's a bug master who can make things out of silk-she's trading new, better costumes for extra perks._

 _Kid's a kid, acts like a kid, kind of crazy-thinks she's a mutant alien from another universe, everyone else is humoring her._

 _Some kind of Changer, powerful but not sure if she's strong._

 _Kinda bummed I missed the party._

Huh. That was weird. Sophia could usually tell if someone was weak or strong at the first meeting, she was a great judge of character.

 _I know something that might cheer you up-you know who disappeared on us yesterday, but I bet she'll have forgotten her lesson._

 _We can teach it again._

 _:)_

Emma smiled at Sophia's response. She wondered if they could make Taylor cry without hitting her today.

 **Oh, What Tangled Webs We Weav** - _This is a bad one, too._

(If you poopoo the next one, I'll kill off the real you.)

Taylor looked sick. She seemed to be in a daze, there were dark circles around her eyes, and her skin was even paler than normal.

"You shouldn't have come in today, Tay," Emma said, "you're going to get everyone sick."

"I don't think so," Madison added. "She's obviously been selling her ass or sharing needles or something. You can't get AIDS from just being around one of the filthy drug-whores."

"Nah," Sophia added. "She's just realized that no amount of makeup will cover up how much of an ugly, skinny, worthless weakling is so she just doesn't bother anymore."

This wasn't fun. Taylor wasn't reacting. She tried to move past them, but Sophia shoved her to the ground. Taylor didn't try to get up.

"Did," Emma asked, "is she just giving up?"

Then Taylor started having a seizure. As she shook and foamed at the mouth, Madison screamed "Oh shit! Is she on drugs!? Is he ODing!?" And then she ran off.

"Okay," Emma began, "nobody else saw us. We can just walk away and let someone else-"

Sophia, it seemed, noticed something about Taylor and flipped her over. Something on Taylor's shoulder, something under her thick hoody, was glowing a sickly green, like video game poison or radiation from an old cartoon. Sophia pulled the hoody off and fiddled with Taylor's undershirt, revealing some kind of weird, glowing green scar.

"Shit," the Ward said. "This was so fucking obvious, how didn't I... But she was fine yesterday, I thought Panacea fixed her up..."

"What?" Emma asked. "Why would Panacea work on her?"

"Hebert's Weaver," Sophia explained. "We need to call an ambulance or get a teacher or something, get her to the hospital. You have no idea how much trouble I'll get in if they find out I let a fellow Ward die."

Not wanting her best friend to get in trouble over her worthless ex-best friend, Emma complied and pulled out her phone.


	10. Chapter 10

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Alan wasn't quite sure why Emma had been so opposed to visiting Taylor in the hospital. She hadn't wanted to back in January, either, and he hadn't made her at the time, but he felt that it was important this time. He had known that they'd become distant in the last few years, but... Or perhaps it was because she didn't want to see her friend in the condition she was in because when Emma had finally agreed to come, she insisted on having her friend Sophia come along for emotional support. Regardless, Danny was an old friend and this had to be Hell for him, Taylor being in the hospital for the second time in one year, and Alan felt the need to be there for him at least for a little while.

And so Alan led two teenaged girls through the hospital to a private room in a certain ward, finding a brown haired and bespectacled man slumped in a chair next to a too thin girl with dark hair, who was unconscious in a bed in the middle of the room, with a tube in her mouth and more tubes and wires attached all over her body. Visible under her her hospital gown was a thick layer of bandages on her right shoulder. There was a standard push-up window at the far end of the room.

"How are you holding up?" Alan asked his old friend.

"About as well as I can," Danny said. "They've got her stable, but they don't think she'll wake up until after the poison's been cured."

"Do they know what it is?" Alan asked. He new the base details, Taylor had had a bad reaction to something and passed out in the hallway. Sophia and Emma had found her and got her help in time. Sophia seemed a bit odd afterward. Alan knew that she was a Ward-he'd helped her get into the Wards, and she and Emma had met when she'd rescued Emma and himself from some gangsters a few years ago. Having saved a life in her civilian identity had to be strange.

"They think it's some kind of parahuman made poison," Danny explained, "a PRT representative was by earlier. He said that they suspect some mad villain of poisoning random people but they're not sure. They either need to get a sample of the poison to make an antidote or get Panacea to take a look at it and Panacea didn't come in today."

Alan blinked. "Daniel, you're lying to me."

"Alan-"

"Danny," Alan interrupted, "I'm a divorce lawyer. Half my job is catching people in lies while helping to make sure that other people don't get caught in lies. We've known each other for how long? I know when you're lying. What's really happening?"

Danny grimaced "I can't say."

From the corner of his eye, Alan saw Sophia roll her eyes. She was a Ward who'd helped save Taylor-had she been told the truth? Before he could question either his friend or Emma's, his attention was drawn to the sound of an opening window.

A short figure, covered head to toe in a shiny costume of gold and marbled dark blue with a long black ponytail poking out the back of her all-covering mask, climbed in through the now opened window and flipped in, landing on her feet with a soft thud. Alan's attention was drawn first to the strange emblem on her torso-an oval with eight sharp lines heading out from the sides and twisting at right angles-two to each shoulder, two to a side framing her abdomen, giving the impression of a spider. An instant later, however, his attention was drawn to her face as her mask literally melted and parts of it oozed up her nose and into her ears and eye sockets. It was actually quite disturbing to watch.

"Okay," the little Asian girl in the creepy slime costume said with a hint of annoyance. "Some guy called 'The Chipmunk-Hunk' broke Chitter out of her cell half an hour ago saying something about needing her to save the Squirrelverse from the Hawk-People, so asking her about where the Bad Boyz are isn't gonn-ah shoot!" It seemed that the girl had just noticed that there was more than whoever she was expecting in the room.

"That's the girl you were asking me for help with," Alan said. Something about help with the legalities of fostering her. Alan hadn't asked questions at the time, even though it was quite strange, but... "If she's the new Ward, then Taylor is-"

"Weaver," Sophia interrupted, "The kid's Cuddlebug, we're all on the same page, we can stop dancing around it?"

Cuddlebug visible sniffed the air, then turned towards Sophia. "Hello, what's your name?"

"Sophia," she said bluntly.

"You sound like you knew that Taylor was Weaver before now," Cuddlebug said, "and I know she didn't tell you, so when she wakes up I'm telling her that you're Shadow Stalker. _Now_ we're all on the same page."

"I don't know what-"

"All of my senses are improved to superhuman levels." Cuddlebug interrupted while pointing to her nose. "Including smell. You and Shadow Stalker smell exactly alike." The girl's costume shifted and changed color and texture until she was dressed in a light blue t-shirt, with a strange red circle emblem on her sternum, a matching knee-length skirt, black leggings, and sneakers. "So, my name's Ashley. I've met Mister Barnes but I don't know who you are?" The girl half-said-half-asked Emma.

"Emma."

Alan sighed. His daughter still looked distinctly uncomfortable with this whole situation. Though to be fair, everything was a lot more complicated than he'd been led to believe.

"Okay, from the top-"

"Weaver got bit by a blue spider-lady at the bank and Panacea messed up when she fixed her," Ashley said quickly, "and now we either need to get Panacea to fix her mistake or find the spider-lady to make an antidote and there are a lot of spiders in here."

Everyone jumped. Alan hadn't noticed it at first, but there were, in fact, a large number of spiders in the room, clustered in the corners.

"I-I need to leave," Emma said suddenly, before rushing out of the room with Sophia following after. Alan sighed, but Emma would be fine with just Sophia for a while.

"They don't... seem to be causing trouble," Alan said in reference to the spiders.

"Taylor's power is bug control," Danny explained. "she might have called them in a dream, or..."

Alan noted that the girl, Ashley, was rubbing her temples. "Did anyone ever get ahold of Panacea?"

It was Danny's turn to sigh. "Not yet."

Alan pulled out his phone. Carrol Dallon, alias Brandish, worked at the firm he was a partner of. She was a friend.

He dialed, she answered. _"Hello?_ "

"Carrol, it's Alan."

 _"This isn't a good time."_

"I know, but it's an emergency. I know that Amelia doesn't normally do requests, but-"

 _"Not you, too. Look, Panacea needs to rest and recuperate after her ordeal at the bank. She will return to healing when she's good and ready."_

"Carrol, trust me," Alan began, "I more than anyone know what it's like to want to protect your child after something horrific happens, but there's a life hanging in the balance and Panacea might be the only one who can save her."

 _"Alan, Panacea isn't responsible for the lives of every sick or injured person in this city. She does what she does out of the goodness of her own heart, but if it might be unnecessarily harmful or stressful for her than she'll have to stop for a while. I'm sorry, but..."_

"Just talk to the girl's father for a minute, please." Alan handed the phone to Danny, who held it carefully.

"Um, hello Mrs.," he said into the receiver, "ugh." Over the next few minutes, the expression on Danny's face changed from depression to confusion, to anger, back to confusion, to shock, before settling on horror. After a few moments, Danny hung up the phone and carefully handed it back to Alan.

"Someone who I think is Glory Girl took the phone midway through the conversation," Danny explained in monotone. "According to her, the Dallon household hasn't been right for Panacea for some time and they hit some kind of breaking point after the incident at the bank. Panacea ran away from home last night, and Brandish has been lying about it to protect New Wave's image."

Alan didn't know what to say about that.

The sound of movement drew the two men's attention back to the still open window, where Cuddlebug, back in full costume, was preparing to climb back out the window.

"Where are you going?" Danny managed to ask.

"She got bit trying to protect us," the girl said, her voice now distorted somehow, "so I'm going to go find either Panacea or the Spider."

"As-Cuddlebug, that's not really up to you."

"It's our fault that she's hurt," the girl said, "so we've got to take responsibility. It's what Spider-Man would do."

And then she jumped out the window.

Danny sighed again, and Alan had to ask: "Why did she start referring to herself in the plural, and who the hell is Spider-Man?"

"It's a long story."


	11. Chapter 11

**The Opposite of Carnage**

In a secure warehouse owned, once you got passed the shell companies and false identities, by Maxwell Anders, Kaiser was watching two men in heavy powered armor carrying a technologically advanced box, a good five feet to a side, that was in turn loaded onto some kind of anti-gravity platform from a tinker-made truck and placing it securely on the ground.

From the truck came running a young man in a lab coat, with short blond hair that stood on end from the static. Donar, Gesellschaft affiliated Cape, a friend of a friend of Kreig, and Tinker specializing in Electromagnetism. A man had murdered two of his capes in cold blood and had been waging a one-man war on the Empire ever since, and that man had some kind of power over magnetism. In a stroke of fortune, Kreig had mentioned his acquaintance and one thing led to another and within the week, Kaiser could now counter this user of magnetism with the creations of it's Master.

The man in question was babbling excitedly in German, before suddenly running up to Kaiser and grabbing Kaiser's hand in in his own two rubber gloved hands and giving it a vigorous shake. "You are Kaiser, yes?" The man said in a moderate German accent. "I've heard many good things about you, yes. It is good to be here, good to be doing good work in a new city in a new country."

"Yes," Kaiser said. He briefly wondered if the man's overfriendliness had something to do with why he was so easily moved between nations. "Well, I have a meeting to get two, those two" Kaiser said, pointing to a few elder non-powered members of the Empire, true believers, "will help you settle in and-" There was a loud noise from the two power-armored men and the box and Donar began screaming and cursing in German to the two men. Dear God, the two men, in armor, had to be eight feet tall to Donar's five and a half but the way they cowered before him he might have well have been fifty feet.

"Sorry," the Tinker said as he finished and turned back to Kaiser, "these two _Idioten_ apparently weren't as gentle with a rather... temperamental power source I've been studying as they should have been." Suddenly, the man smiled. "Oh, but if I can unlock its secrets, anything will be possible! Imagine it, entire countries powered by clean energy! Entire dozens of cities cleansed all at once!" He then laughed dementedly, enough that even Kaiser began to feel uncomfortable. Then he changed tracks, suddenly becoming quite cheerful in the traditional sense, "would you like to take a peek at it?"

Kaiser silently cursed himself: After such a build up he had to.

At his nod, Donar rushed over to the box and started pressing buttons that Kaiser hadn't even noticed were there, causing the box to unfold and change shape and... Kaiser wasn't sure but he could have been sworn that there was more moving machinery in the box than could fit in that space, but that was Tinkers for you. Finally, a canister of some sort was revealed, before opening up to reveal...

"... A stone hammer?" Kaiser asked incredulously.

"Not just any stone hammer!" The man said excitedly, "it was a pain in the ass to get it mobile, but I think this is the genuine article! Come, come, take a closer look, read the inscription!"

In for a penny... Kaiser approached the odd mechanical pedestal, noting that the hammer seemed positively ancient up close... but the inscription was in relatively modern English. "Whosoever holds this hammer..."


	12. Chapter 12

**The Opposite of Carnage**

The refrigerator box I'd slept in on my first night here was still there. The third time I found my way to that alley, I realized that there were only like five places in this city where I knew where they were and that's not a good thing when you've got a bad guy or a runaway hero to find.

Eventually, I found my way to a street with a lot of buildings that had bars on the windows and a weird chemical smell that I didn't quite recognize. There were a couple of parked cars nearby and-I ducked into an alleyway. I heard people coming, lots of people, and some cars.

I hid behind a dumpster-I didn't want to risk taking a peek, but I could smell a lot of people-some of them were familiar, the not-as-bad bad guys from the bank. Others were brand new. One of them smelled really bad and was really close to someone who smelled a lot like motor oil. A couple had more weird chemical smells.

After a really long time, it quieted down a little bit and I bent around the dumpster to look. It seemed like everyone had gone into one building and... That was a bar. A bad guy bar, like in the movies. When the hero needed help finding a bad guy, he'd go into the bad guy bar and talk to some slightly less bad guys. He might have to threaten them or offer them money, but usually one of them could at least give him a hint. I'd just have to go on in and-ahh!

I ducked back behind the dumpster and clutched my head. It was weird. Ever since Taylor had been in the hospital, I'd been getting these weird buzzy headaches in the back of my head. They didn't last very long, but they were distracting and I didn't know where they came from.

Maybe just barging in wasn't such a good idea after all? I'd have to sneak in, or something. "I wish I could turn invisible or something," I whispered.

 _"Three methods."_

"What!?" I shouted. Then I panicked and double checked to make sure nobody was around and that the bad guys in the bar didn't hear me. "What?" I asked again in a whisper.

 _"Three methods,"_ Mister Snuggles explained, "s _ymbiote biomass change color and texture. It difficult, but if cover hair and Subject host move slow and quiet, Subject symbiote can render imperceptible. Repetition make task easier. Two prior hosts also have methods of invisibility, could replicate with effort or time."_

"Why don't you tell me you can do these things you do?"

 _"Subject host not inquire."_

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, do it. The first one."

Was it strange that the feeling of Mister Snuggle's body covering my hair was the only part of being bonded with him that I thought was weird? anyway, he did it, and when I noticed that I couldn't see my hand anymore, I started to slowly ease my way towards the bar when I got another one of those buzzy headaches. I fell to my knees, this one really, really hurt, and the next thing I knew, there was somebody behind me. I heard a beep, like on a heart monitor.

"For future reference, little one," came the voice of a grown man, full of authority, "the next time you try to turn invisible, make sure that no one nearby is watching."

I checked and apparently, the buzzy headaches affected mister snuggles too because I wasn't blended into the background anymore. I gulped and slowly turned around to see a man in sculpted metal armor with a round bucket helmet that showed his face. He was familiar. I'd seen pictures. The color of the armor was wrong, and he didn't have a cape, but otherwise, he looked just like...

"Magneto!"

The man just said "Close enough." This was bad, this was really bad. I didn't know much, and the real one was supposed to be a good guy now, but the Real Magneto used to be a bad guy mutant who fought the X-men and other heroes and hated normal humans for some reason. And he was really, really strong. An evil clone of him wasn't, it was bad!.

I heard the beeping again. He looked at some really fancy looking watch with a bunch of lights and no clock. "What's that?" I asked. Maybe if I kept him talking, I could figure out how to get out of this.

"A device of my own creation, though templated off of several others, designed to track the Mutant X-Factor and the genes that cause it." He explained. "Finding myself a stranger in a strange land, I felt it prudent to find others of my kind, though I've since been distracted by other endeavors. It does appear to be malfunctioning, however. For whatever reason, it's telling me that you're four mutants instead of just one."

"I'm not a mutant." I wasn't. There was that thing with my extra chemicals-hormones, but... "I mean, I'd know if I was a mutant, right?"

 _"Subject host has factor not present in most prior hosts, present in only three others."_

Now I was starting to feel a little sick but I didn't know why. "... Three and me?"

 _"Affirmative."_

"Didn't you say something about absorbing DNA and junk?"

 _"Affirmative,"_ he repeated.

"What?" The man asked.

"Not you. Um..." Oh gosh, did I tell him the truth or...

"Regardless," Magneto's clone said, "would you care to tell me why a small child is staring at a tavern full of criminals?"

"...My friend is hurt, and she's not gonna get better unless we find the person who hurt her." I left Panacea out of it. It wouldn't be right to tell a possible bad guy that a hero was missing and out on the streets, even if Panacea was a dummy and a screwup. "And it's my fault she got hurt, so I need to... I think somebody in the bar might know where to look for her-Jore-Oh-Goo-Mow."

"Ah," the man said, "then the task is simple, come." And then he gently took my hand and led me across the street and into the bar. It was weird. My brain kind of turned off-and I ignored Mister Snuggles' comments about it working in the first place-so I just let him do it.

"...And on top of all that," a man in a costume made of metal blades said, "Lung and his minions have gone off the deep en-"

Suddenly everyone, the metal armored man and the two girls who look like Asa-asgu-Like the people that Thor is one of, a woman with a lot of makeup and not a lot of clothes and a big man made of garbage next to her, a woman in a welding mask, one in a gas mask, and orange lizardy looking man, a fat sluggy looking man, and a girl in robe, a man in a tight black full body suit and a white snake on his face, and the not-so bad guys from before.

All of the leader types were sitting around a table that had been pushed together.

"You," the metal-suited man said upon seeing us. "You've got a lot of nerve coming here." He stood up and I kind of got the impression that he was angry and trying to be threatening when he looked at Magneto's clone.

"I was under the impression that this was neutral territory for the sake of peaceful meetings," the clone said. "Though, if you intend to break the rules of neutrality by starting violence, I'm more than willing to _finish_ that violence."

"Um," I said, "we don't want trouble. But you're wearing a suit made entirely of metal and according to Wikipedia, he can control the iron in people's blood. Just so you know."

"...You're one of those new Wards," the man said all of a sudden. "I didn't think a child hero would willingly keep company with a murderer."

"I'll admit," the clone said before I could respond, "I lost my temper when I saw one of your subordinates using her powers to _assault a handicapped child_ , but you will note that not one of your minions has lost their life in an encounter with me since." He laughed, "a number have lost their freedom, but none have lost their lives."

"Regardless," the spikey metal man said, "we're having an important discussion about the influx of new capes and the recent chaos in the city. And where they came from-"

"We're clones from another universe," the Clone of that one girl who was with the not so bad guys shouted suddenly. She'd gotten a wool hat since the bank. "I mean, I woke up naked in a tube and I don't have a belly button," she said lifting up her shirt just high enough to show, "and stuff that we all took for granted hasn't happened yet, so... Clones from another universe. That makes the most sense, right?"

"Oh... Okay," the spiky metal man said in response, "that..."

'The child has a question that needs to be answered," Magneto's clone said all of a sudden, "and thinks that someone in here knows. Once her question is answered, we shall depart." He looked at me as if to say 'go on.'

"Um... I need to know where Jore-Oh-Goo-Mow is," I said, "the Fuzzy Blue Naked Spider-Lady that's with the Bad Boyz. It... It's important."

"The ABB are based in the East End of the city," the girl in the purple suit and mask from the bank said, "mostly in the docks. And there's been stories about people being killed by a monster in the south most part of the docks in the last couple of days. If you need to find Jorogumo, I'd start there. Do you know where the docks are?"

I nodded. Mister Hebert worked down there, in an office at the Dockyard. It's why he smelled like sea water and paper. "Thank you."

"If that's all...?" Magneto's clone asked, and I nodded again, "then we'll be on our way."

He led me back out onto the street, I heard somebody grumbling behind us, when suddenly he crouched down and picked me up like a princess, and then we flew really fast and I had trouble seeing where we were going until we stopped. He set me down and I was almost dizzy.

"I'm sorry," Clone-neto said, "but I'm not one to trust that a Nazi will remain reasonable or won't engage in violence if it's convenient for them, so I felt it prudent to get away from there as soon as possible. I also apologize for earlier," he went on, "that can't have been the best way to learn that you were a mutant."

"Yeah," I said. That sour-sicky feeling in my tummy was back. "Um, can I ask you a question?"

"You just did." Ugh, I hate that joke. Daddy did it all the time. I ignored how my heart started hurting and asked: "I read that the real-er, original Magneto was a bad guy who hated humans and almost destroyed the world. That he's kinda-sorta a good guy no, but... all the other clones have been... But you seem so nice, and...?"

"Child, do you know about the Holocaust?"

I nodded. "After World War One, a man named Adolf Hitler got control of Germany and convinced the people there that Jewish people were responsible for everything bad that happened, so before and during World War Two, everyone treated Jewish people and a couple other kinds of people really badly and a lot of them-like, a lot a lot, were killed." Mommy and Daddy didn't like it when I learned about those things, but apparently, there were certain things you had to learn about or they wouldn't let you be homeschooled. I couldn't go to real school because I was sick all the time, so...

"Well, I, or rather the 'Real' Magneto," he said patiently, "was a survivor of the Holocaust. And people? A lot of people don't like mutants, for one reason or another. And it can get very bad sometimes. The original Magneto was afraid that there would be a second Holocaust, but with mutants, and that was why he did the things he did." I...I knew people didn't like Mutants, but... "However," he went on, "eventually he realized that he was doing more harm than good, that he'd become the very monster he feared would emerge from the anti-mutant factions, and made effort to mend his ways... to mixed success." He laughed, but it was a kind of sad laugh. "Honestly, under different circumstances, I may have ended up like that-acted the same as the original Magneto did, but then I realized something."

"What."

"That we-you, and I, and the other clones transported to this world, are the only mutants in this world. The first mutants of this place," he said. "There is no anti-mutant prejudice because until last week there were no mutants." He smiled. "And as I realized that, it occurred to me that, depending on how the first of the mutants are seen, such hatred might never form. And since I, through my actions, have the power to shape the perception of mutants in this world, then regardless of what I want-my desires or feelings-I have to do my best to prevent that hatred from being born."

That kind of reminded me of something, a saying that was used a lot when people talked about my favorite hero Spider-Man. "With great power, comes great responsibility."

"Not how I'd put it," he said, "but yes. We're near where the young woman said you might find the one you're looking for." I could smell the bay. "I think that this is where we part ways, at least for now, but first-" he took the device on his wrist off and took it apart with his powers. Then he put it back together, all in just a few seconds, and handed it to me. "I've modified this gene scanner and keyed it to my own mutant signature," he said, "if you are ever in trouble and need the help of someone with 'great power,' this should allow you to find me from anywhere in the tri-state area."

I hugged him. "Thank you. For earlier."

"Anything, for a fellow mutant in need."

"Um," I had to ask, "what should I call you? I mean..."

"As my original self-resides in another universe," he said, "I see no problem with continuing to use the name Magneto for myself. However... My original used the name Erik as an alias for quite some time, it's as good a name as any."

"Thank you, again, Erik. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, child," he said. He left soon after that. I put on the device he gave me-and Mister Snuggles oozed over it, saying he'd keep it safe-and I went about trying to sniff out the Spider-Lady.


	13. Chapter 13

**The Opposite of Carnage**

So turns out that we're not the only ones looking for the Spider-Lady. After I finally managed to pick up her scent between the smell of seawater, blood, puke, pee, sweat, and other stuff I didn't know, I noticed that there was a smell a lot like dust and it was next to Lung, that meany from the night I met Taylor, and another person that I hadn't smelled before. I tried to move around them, but...

I jumped ten feet to the left. Fighting a teleporting ninja in devil masks was not as fun as you'd think it would be-buzzy headache, jumped straight up, stuck to a building, lightning exploded where I was a little bit ago-especially when they cheat and use grenades.

"...So why did all three of us have to come find Spider-Bitch?" came a voice like the fake Bakuda from the bank. Probably the real one.

"Because you managed to find her and lose her again within a day of her running off the first time," Meany said, "so half-because you know how and half-punishment."

Demon-Ninja-Man appeared up on the roof of the building I was hanging onto and tried to stomp on my head, so I had to jump off and backflip down.

"...Why do you even want her so bad?" Bakuda asked.

"So I can feed her people who question me!" Meany shouted.

Ninja man popped up next to me and dropped some kind of soda-can looking thing. The buzzy headache came back, a little worse. I jumped away and the can flashed-I was as far away from it as I was from the lightning one, but that wasn't far enough. It didn't blow up into anything, but it was loud. Too loud. It hurt, bad, and Mister Snuggles screamed.

The next thing I knew, I was kneeling on the ground with my hands over my ears and Mister Snuggles was oozing off of me-some of him was in a puddle around me. That wasn't good.

"Hey," the woman said, "she's Asian... Ooh! I had this idea the other day but I forgot about it because of the talking duck! We kidnap everybody in our demographic who refuses to join, and then I put bombs in their brains so they have to work for us or die."

I didn't catch what Meany said after, if anything, because the demon ninja had a sword or like a long knife and he stabbed me with it. I wasn't as strong without all of Mister Snuggles on me, but I was able to move so I only got stabbed in the arm.

It hurt. A lot. Like, really, really bad. There was a lot of blood and I kinda started crying, but then I noticed a bit of Mister Snuggles leaking out of the cut and the bits of him on the ground oozed back up and I was back in full costume.

My right arm still hurt, so I made a fist with my left one and when the demon ninja stabbed at me again I punched him in the knee.

There was a sick crunchy sound and he fell to the ground. He hit the side of his head and his mask was lopsided, but he was still breathing and the only blood was mine, so I think he was down but still okay.

The buzzy headaches kept coming. I jumped out of the way of a blast of fire and noticed that the Meany was looking right at me. He seemed angry.

Then I noticed her. I could smell her before I could see or hear her. The Spider-Lady jumped up over a building and landed in the streets. I think she was trying to sniff something out herself, and Meany immediately turned to her.

I couldn't let him take her, I needed her so they could fix Taylor, so I jumped and ran for him, as fast as I could, and got up in front of him. He looked down at me and was about to hit me, but I punched him as hard as I could right in his groin.

At first, there was a loud, wet, gross popping/cracking sound. Then Meany collapsed. He let out a really squeaky, really quiet whiney sound, and then said "you punched me in the dick. why did you punch me in the dick?"

"Cause it would work," I said. Really, how stupid can somebody be?

Bakuda or whatever looked at me but didn't do anything, so I turned back and saw the spider-lady crouched down and smelling the demon ninja. spider-lady was the one I wanted. I got down on my hands and feet, like a sprinter, took a deep breath, and charged at her.

She jumped up, but I was ready-I set out two of my tentacles and managed to grab her legs while she was in mid-air. She hit the ground hard, then started crawling away on her six arms. She was fast and strong, stronger than us, I think. Then I used our stick-em powers to make my feet stick to the ground. Suddenly I stopped moving, but I fell forward and landed on my hands, which I also made stick to the ground. Now that I was good and grounded, I was able to give her a good pull and yank her back. She lifted up the ground for a second but then she grabbed onto the ground with all six hands and I think she made hers stick, too. Then she started pulling with two hands and sticking with four to try and get away, but I had her pinned.

I could smell a couple of familiar scents and burning gasoline, coming this way fast. I could hear Bakuda moving. Before I could do anything else though, I got another buzzy headache and had to unstick and jumped. Something metal sounding clanked below me just before the spider-lady's pulling yanked me forward. Something popped and I got splashed by something that was like super-cold and noticed that everything in a couple feet of where we just were was covered in frost.

Momentum was a harsh mistress. With our strong grip on the spider-lady, her pulling us so hard, and us being up in the air meant that I went flying right into her.

"Subject host needs pay better attention."

"Subject Mister Snuggles need shut up until my head stops buzzing," I answered. I think I hit the spider head-first. I could hear a motorcycle.

Then something wet hit me and Mister Snuggles... well, he didn't wince, but that's the feeling I got from him. I opened my eyes and closed them again. The spider-lady was on top of me, with her little feely fangs wigging about and her and spit dripping down on me. I had a free arm, so I tried to push her off, and then-

 **BSIZZZZZET!**

All of a sudden, spider-lady seized up, shook for a bit, and fell over. She was twitching a bit, but she looked like she was breathing.

I got up, and I looked at my hands. "We can shock people!"

I heard the sound of boots hitting the ground. Bakuda was running away... But then a motorcycle swerved around a corner and a big glowy green-gun shot something at her and she got knocked over.

The motorcycle drove right up to me, and a lady dressed like a soldier with an American flag scarf covering her face got off. I think Taylor said she was called Miss Militia, but I hadn't met her yet. A little bit later, Aegis flew up carrying Vista. She didn't look happy about being carried like a princess, and kind of jumped from my new team's leader's arms when he landed.

"You," the woman said, "are in so much trouble young lady."

"Wait," Vista said all of a sudden, "did you do all of this by yourself?" She was looking at the twitchy spider-lady, the downed demon-ninja, and the giant man in the fetal position.

"Kinda," I said, "we're never alone, so..."

"It usually takes a whole team to drive off Lung," Vista said. She sounded incredulous. "How? Thought you were weak to fire?"

"We punched him in the groin," I said, "as hard as we could."

"...You know," Aegis said, "the entire ABB leadership just got taken out in one night, that probably earns her a bit of leeway."

"That's the Director's call, not ours," Miss Militia answered.

"I don't care if we get in trouble," I said, "we got the Spider-Lady, now they can make an antidote for Weaver... Wait," I asked, "how did you know I was here?"

"We received an anonymous call stating that you were seen in this area and I was dispatched," Miss Militia explained.

"Vista and I were patrolling," Aegis continued, "and ran into Miss Militia and volunteered to back her up in case there was trouble."

"Okay," I said, "now lets-Bakuda's getting up."

Miss Militia turned around, her glowy green gun turned into something else, something a little more tube-like, and then she loaded something else into it.

"Freeze!" She said.

Bakuda raised her hands, but didn't surrender "Counteroffer, you let me go, and in exchange, I won't remotely trigger the ten bombs still on Oni Lee's person. I have absolutely no idea what'll happen if they all go off at once, but the boom should be big enough to take out at least this whole block and everyone in it."

"Are you insane!?" Vista shouted.

"You'd really kill yourself and who knows how many others just to avoid going to prison?" Miss Militia called out.

"Are you you or are you another Skrull?" I added. I mean, it just occurred to me but she'd had a Skrull pose as her already...

"All geniuses are insane, I don't know what Skrull is, you know as well as I do that after what I did at Cornell I've got a one-way ticket to the Cage with my name on it, and does this answer your question?" And then the demon ninja started beeping.

Miss Militia fired and hit Bakuda, who had started laughing like a madwoman as a bunch of foam exploded around her.

"Get out of here!" Vista said suddenly.

"What!?" I shouted.

"I can bend, stretch, and, fold space," Vista said as a dent started forming next to the demon ninja, "I can contain the blast," Lee fell into a sudden pit in the street. It looked kind of like a cartoon hole. "but the more living things there are, the harder it is for me to do it. I don't know how long we have, so..."

I sprouted my tentacles and grabbed Aegis, Miss Militia, and the spider-lady snuggly and then jumped away and ran. Aegis and Miss Militia yelped-the woman seemed indignant.

And then there was a boom, but not a big boom. I turned back and... Okay, the way the buildings were bent and stretched looked weird, but then they snapped back to normal pretty fast. I ran back as fast as I could...

...There was the pile of foam that Bakuda was in... There was Mmeany, still in the fetal position... but where the Ninja, Oni Lee had been there was just a pile of what smelled like salt... the little bit of my blood was gone too, and Vista was...

I set everyone down and walked over to where she was sitting. She was breathing heavily. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Over did it," she said roughly, "tired. Don't feel so good."

I heard Miss Militia talking. "...and Bakuda incapacitated, Oni Lee was killed, Vista might need medical attention, and we'll need someone on standby to take a venom sample from Jorogumo" and then a phone clicking. "There'll be transports here soon," Miss Militia said to the rest of us.

I looked at the pile of salt and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. Then I looked back to Vista and felt sicker.

"So," Vista said between heavy breaths, "what's a Skrull?"

Was her asking questions like this a good sign? "Um...Well, um... first I have to tell you about the Fantastic Four. A long time ago, Doctor Richards took his best friend, a woman he kinda liked, and her little brother up into space..."


	14. Chapter 14

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Oh god. I felt like shit. I should have called in sick or something, but... The Trio were blocking my way... wait, how did I get to school, I'd only just left? They were saying things to me, but... Their mouths were moving but no words were coming out. Sophia shoved me. I fell and-Spiders! Spiders everywhere, I was covered in spiders! Where did they come from? Why wasn't my power working on them? Why...

...I was crawling on my hands and feet in a dimly lit area that smelled strongly of sweat and some kind of chemical. The ground was rough, cold, and clammy, and I could hear something really, really loud from a brightly lit place in the distance. I looked up-the sky was so bright and the cliffs in the distance looked so smooth. I started walking/crawling around, aimlessly, when suddenly the ground began shaking. I crouched down and held on tight, hoping that the ground wouldn't open up and swallow me, when a massive black foot suddenly landed in front of me. I gulped, looked up, and saw a giant Sophia Hess, hundreds of feet tall with massive droplets of water covering her body and her hair wet, with her modesty preserved by a massive towel. She looked down at me, and my ears bled from her shout of **"FUCKING SPIDER!"** Then she lifted up her foot and quickly brought it down upon me and...

...I was restrained, or something, and... straps or cords of something sticky were running across my back and thousands of white cords were stretching out as far as the eye could see in all directions-up and down and all around. Monsters-spiders the size of Endbringers, some with humanoid faces, others with too many eyes or legs, some in other exotic colors, and one that looked like a spider and a scorpion had a threeway with a wasp were crawling all around this massive structure and... Oh, my God, I was stuck in a giant spider-web.

"Help me!" I called out. "Help Me!"

I could feel vibrations on the cords. Something was coming. Fuck this, I wasn't going to die without a fight, I started struggling, trying to look up to see my doom, when I saw her. She was beautiful in an exotic way-a face like a model's marred only by her four eyes with their glowing red irises, but even those were beautiful in a way, and the pale blue of her skin. Her face was framed by two long ears that tapered to a sharp point just at the crown of her head, which was itself adorned with a tiara of some shiny black metal. Her hair was long and silver-not white, not grey, not "platinum blonde," but looked like actual hair-thin strands of silver-and went down long enough to cover her breasts, the only covering o her body. He skin was smooth and her muscles toned-clearly powerful, but also lithe and graceful. Almost against my will, I found my eyes drown lower and that's where the illusion stopped. Instead of the hips of a woman, her waist merged seamlessly into the body of a massive spider, it's body covered in a smooth, shiny carapace that was as black as night, supported by eight long... well, spidery legs that ended in three-clawed feet.

I heard her laugh, gently, and looked back up. she was smiling at me and spoke in a light, dulcet voice. "What do we have here?" She said in a voice that seemed genuine rather than condescending. "You're quite interesting, sweety." She climbed up around me and settled her body so that she could lean her head right over mine. "Connected to the Great Web by an Outsider with no previous knowledge of Spiders or mystical Totems... Then, just as it begins to settle in, connected again by the venom of one of The Other's progeny? And such a good heart, taking care of the anomalous Totem and the other cutie it's bonded with." She smiled ear to ear. "Why, there's no telling just how you could end up. You're lucky I found you first, some of the others may have simply eaten you to prevent the chaos you could cause, my cute little Totem." She gave a bright, warm smile, from ear to ear before switching to a sing-song tone "But me? I love chaos. It can be so very fun... or a _horrific nightmare_ for everyone involved. But the surprise is half the fun!" Then she gently reached down and started stroking my cheek in a sensual manner and suddenly my blood ran cold. "In fact, my little cutie, I think you're just perfect for me." She smiled again, and then slowly leaned down until her face was just level with mine. I could feel her warm breath on my skin and the gentle caress of her hand and feared that something incredibly uncomfortable was about to happen... Until she smiled again, this time with an open mouth, revealing long, vampiric fangs. The beauty was gone from her eyes, replaced by a look of pure madness, and my veins began to burn like no pain I'd ever felt before after she suddenly sank her teeth into the flesh of my neck. Just before I lost awareness, she booped me on the nose and I heard her say "have fun now!" as everything faded to black...

...I toppled buildings with careless swings of my massive clawed arms. Hundreds-thousands maybe-of capes had assembled to drive me off, but not even Legend or Eidolon could hurt me a thrust of my eight powerful legs against the ground I soared high above all of them and landed, crushing a hospital beneath my weight. I felt something. Some kind of irritating tapping across my abdomen and quickly reached down and snapped up the pesky little bug. I held it up to my face and saw the black and grey-clad form of the Invincible Alexandria struggling to break free from my iron grip. The eyes I saw through her helmet, tiny as they were, shown with anger and defiance. I smiled, sadistically, and then opened my massive fanged maw and-What the fuck was I doing! I, this wasn't me, I...

...Once more, I found myself in a vast expanse of darkness filled with a massive three-dimensional spider-web, but at least this time I wasn't stuck to the damn thing. My attention was suddenly drawn to what looked like a ninja in a red and black costume walking by me without paying me the slightest bit of attention, half-humming-half singing a chorus about how all the weirdos in the world were in New York City tonight. I followed after him, finding myself floating in the aisles between strands of the web, until we came up across a peculiar meeting.

On one side of a table was sitting a little blond girl-no older than four from the looks of it. Behind her was a giant of a man who seemed to be made of orange rocks, a young woman with ridiculous hair and too many belts in an all-concealing black ensemble with a large white spider-emblem on her chest, similar too but less stylized than the ones that Ashley and I had settled on, and a man in a skin-tight and red-and-blue number with a face covering cowl and a smaller spider on his chest. On the other side was a man, dressed similarly to the man across from him with the bottoms replaced with some kind of white sash and what looked like pajama pants and traditional looking slippers, yet another man in the same red-and-blue, this one with a Union Jack type design, a portly late teen with brown hair, wearing green and yellow jumpsuit type outfit with a round metal something with four cylinders on her back, and a woman in an old-timey aviator looking outfit with steam-punch mechanical spider-legs on her back.

"...and Wolverine might be interested in helpin', too," the Rocky man said in a voice that was both gruff and gentle, "ran into them when I found this one." He gestured to the red-and-blue man by his side.

"Which Wolverine!?" the red and black ninja called out, "the Old One, the sometimes evil one, the one who I don't remember came if he back to life yet, or the kinda-hot young one with the awesome sidekick?"

"...The new one," Rock-Man said after a minute. Then he looked at the man by his side, "you're seriously friends with him now?" he said with a thumb to the ninja.

"He kind of grows on you after a while," the man with a-Wait, was that the Spider-Man that Ashley kept talking about?

The ninja turned around and looked right at me. "Just a reminder to the folks reading at home, but the Rat-Man is completely ignoring all of that Despicable Deadpool bullshit and the reset to my character post-Secret Empire in the name of writing a more fun story, so I'm still totally besties with Spidey in this fic. Just the other day, we tore some newbs a new one in Overwatch." I blinked, having no idea what to think of that.

Spider-Man in slippers looked up from whatever was on the table and spoke in a mild Indian accent. "These blueprints are quite impressive, Miss Richards," he said looking at the little girl, "especially considering that they're drawn in crayon."

"Of course they are," the so-named Richards replied. She continued, but I didn't catch what she said next because I was too busy jumping at the sudden hand on my shoulder.

I turned around and jumped again, as the person who'd done it was wearing some kind of six-eyed bonze helmet. Once I'd calmed a bit, I noted that he was dressed in what seemed to be a revolutionary era military uniform of some kind. Then I noticed that from the waist down he was some kind of giant-golden five-leged spider-tank.

"You must have questions," he said. "But they'll have to wait for a time. I'm not sure how you've managed to be projected into The Web, though it may help solve a recent mystery, but for now it's time for you to return to your body, young Totem."

"Wait! What's a Totem?" I asked, "what's going on? Why did only the ninja notice me?"

"He didn't," the man said, "only I can perceive you while you're in this state. The rest of your questions will be answered in time." He then reached out and plucked a strand of the massive web around us. and all of a sudden-

-I shot up and gasped. I was in a hospital looking room, but it was dark other than a light to my right. I felt groggy, what time was it?

I noticed Ashley-not Cuddlebug, Ashley was asleep in a chair to the left of my bed. Then I looked around and saw a couple of empty beds and one occupied one, two beds to my right.

"Morning," the blond girl, maybe thirteen, said without looking up from her book-her reading lamp the only light in the room. I noted the IV in her arm.

"Uh...?"

"We're in the infirmary on The Rig," she said, "they brought you hear a few hours after you went into your coma. Apparently, your powers started wigging out and they were afraid that more people would find out who you were."

There was only one person this could be. "Vista?" Wait... More people found out who I was. "What do you mean, more people!?"

"Shadowstalker's at Winslow too. She found you when you passed out, realized you were Weaver, and let it slip to a civie she's friends with, and another guy found out visiting you at the Hospital. Your Dad's been here every day, and things kind of get out when you've got a civilian visiting a Ward in the Sick Bay. Don't worry, they've got a lid on it." She turned a page in her book. "Oh, and when I'm not in costume you can call me Missy. Sorry about... You know."

I laid back and sighed. That was just great. "You said my Dad was here?"

"All day, every day," Missy said with a hint of jealousy in her voice. "The only reason he's not still here is that they won't let him sleep here. Cuddlebug's been sitting next to you non-stop since they started cooking up the antidote for you-You know, she fought Lung, Oni Lee, Bakuda, and that spider-chick for you?"

"She did?" God damn, that...

"Umhmm. Did a pretty good job, too. I might of leaked how Lung ended up to the press. Even if he escapes again, he's never gonna live that down." She said with sudden cheerfulness. "I think this is the first time she's slept in a few days, too. She conked out about an hour ago."

...I didn't know how to feel about that. I..Uh... I was going to have to give her a big hug asap.

"So," I changed the subject, "what happened to you?"

"Eh, survived my heroic sacrifice, had to get checked out, they're giving me drugs to prevent something or other," Missy said completely nonchalant. "It's not that important, I get out of here tomorrow." She yawned, then marked her page and turned off her light. "Sorry to leave you alone, but I should probably get to sleep."

Soon I was lying there in the dark with only Ashley's snoring to keep me company as I contemplated my strange coma-dreams.


	15. Chapter 15

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Accord starred at the laboratory he'd provided his newest ally, two of his Ambassadors on either side, each chosen for symmetry. The flying machines the Tinker provided certainly seemed up to snuff, but he was somewhat... apprehensive... about the massive vat of sickly green chemicals dominating the center of the room.

"So... Mister Kingsley," Accord asked, "the subjects are all supposed to bathe in that?"

"No," the hooded man said. "Direct contact with the formula can be harmful to one's mental health. Not to mention the risk of contaminating the formula. Instead," the man pressed a button on a console near the vat, causing a panel of the clear glass to come loose and slide away, "after thorough grooming and bathing-hence the heavy-duty decontamination shower I requested, and thank you for providing." Kingsley had been very polite but very insistent on that, for reasons that now seemed obvious. "After bathing, the subject will step through this selectively permeable membrane," Kingsley walk up and gesture to the clear membrane revealed by the removal of the glass panel, "which will allow the subject to slowly absorb the formula through the skin in safe concentrations. The end result is a normal human-being being enhanced, in body and in mind, to superhuman levels. Strength enough to lift weight in the eight to ten-ton range, imperial, corresponding increases to running and movement speed, reflexes, agility, stamina, and durability and an IQ in the mid-hundreds. Oh, and thank you again for the anti-bacterial self-cleaning microplastics you so generously donated," Kingsly added, "they made a perfect base for the membrane."

His worries soothed, Accord adjusted his mask to keep it straight and then asked: "is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

"Just one more thing," Kingsley said. He reached into his cape-an eccentricity, but one that Accord tolerated due to its neatness and style and, lightning quick pulled a pistol. The bullet had been fired and pierced Accord's throat before he could react.

Accord his the ground, the warmth suddenly leaving his body. "The Ambassador's work for the Hobgoblin now. First new order of Business: Maximizing profits." And then Accord knew no more.

 **A Freak Like Me Needs Company**

 _A song from the shitty Spider-Man musical? Lame!_

(It's thematically appropriate to the interlude, and you were humming the chorus last chapter.)

 _...Shit_

Coil watched, patiently, as his five volunteers tested their new abilities. Many people would be skeptical of a man in a suit that he clearly stole walked up to them, past many layers of security, and claimed that he could mass produce a serum that could give Super Powers to anyone, but Coil had met Cauldron. The man (older than Coil, it seemed) just had the attitude about him and had more than demonstrated his claims more than adequately that Coil felt he had no choice but to hire the man on the spot. Well, after testing the man in a handful of throwaway timelines, that was.

"Impressive, isn't it?" The brunette asked from his place at Coil's side. He looked young, but he spoke like a man in middle-age. Coil wondered if he wasn't perhaps one of the clones that had appeared recently. Coil nodded. Seeing ordinary mercenaries perform physical actions at what had to be Superhuman levels, despite his new partner's insistence... He might have to take a dose of this 'Variant Super Soldier Serum' himself. "And the Goblin Formula is even more powerful."

"Mister Osborn," Coil said, "I think that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

 **A Freak Like Me Needs Company**

A man was running through the streets of Chicago, completely naked, and while shooting everyone in sight with a machine gun and laughing maniacally-the laugh itself causing destruction of its own on occasion. Another man, running faster than any had the right to, appeared behind the first man and without a word grabbed and snapped his neck.

The man hoisted the corpse upon his shoulders and walked off. None of the surviving witnesses tried to stop him, for obvious reason. He clicked his tongue a few times. It seemed that the Goblin Knight hadn't come out of the cloning process intact. Oh well. He knew someone who would love to play with the corpse of someone who'd had a unique reaction to Goblin Formula.

After having to stop to kill a cop and two z-list Super Heroes, the man made it back to a warehouse where a woman with cigarette burns on her face was asleep on a multilegged, tentacled monster the size of a dinosaur. A cute little girl in a bloodstained dress didn't look up from the dinosaur man she was vivisecting, which was in turn next to the chopped up remains of a lizard woman. Little Bonesaw was such a sweet girl, cheery about everything... except that vaguely familiar slug who'd joined the family before him.

He walked over to her. "I've got a present for you," he said with a smile. "Once you're done with Stego or whatever his name is, you might want to take a look at this guy." He set the body down next to her makeshift workbench. "Phil here has the same powers as me, but from a different formula. He's got a few extras I don't have, too, which might be fun."

Bonesaw smiled as she looked up at him. "Thank's Gabriel. You're an Angel."

The clone of The Grey Goblin smiled. He hadn't considered it at first when, he'd met Jack Slash and company outside of Gary, Indiana, but murdering with friends was actually pretty fun.


	16. Chapter 16

**The Opposite of Carnage**

"Okay," I admitted to Ashley, "you've got a point: This is awesome."

While I had my new spiders put some finishing touches on my new gloves and boots, I was getting the hang of some of my new powers. Perfect vision and hearing, a pulsing danger sense, The speed, strength, endurance, and agility of a Super-athlete; the balance and flexibility of a word class gymnast; and my personal favorite...

I backflipped and stuck a ten-point landing on the floor. Wall-crawling was some of the most fun I'd had in a while. My gloves and boots were done, and that meant I didn't have much need for my new spiders right now. This...Okay, this was kind of the part where it got weird. I didn't just get new powers. My body, it changed. I'd put on about seventy pounds, but I'd only gotten slightly buffer. A little bit muscle tone, but I was still a beanpole. They did a BMI and a couple of scans, apparently my bones and muscles were much denser than normal... I also had, well...

I let my new spiders, each the size of a common house spider and solid white except for their purple eyes and the purple hourglass on their back, climb up my body and opened up the... vents, in my wrists. The cavities were thin and didn't go very deep, but my brand new spiders could all climb inside and just vanish. I could summon them the same way, and so far nobody had any idea where they came from. The PRT scientists at first thought that I might have had something called a second trigger, but after I... reluctantly explained how I'd gotten my powers the first time they through that idea out. they hadn't exactly been thrilled with Ashley's insistence that it was because I had technically been bitten by a radioactive spider or that 'maybe it was magic.' I decided against telling them about my dream about totems.

Regardless, once I'd reabsorbed my spider-army, I turned my attention to the gloves and boots that they'd just finished weaving. After removing them from the complicated loom that I'd been provided with and giving them a cursory examination, I carefully slipped them on. I did a quick flex and waggled my fingers to make sure I hadn't screwed something up and ruined my manual dexterity, but everything seemed fine. Finally, I climbed up a wall and skittered back across the ceiling to Ashley.

"I told you that ceiling walking was fun," Ashley said with just a hint of smugness and a huge smile. "Ooh! We should see about getting a TV on the ceiling at home, then we can play upside-down video games!" I blinked. That was... Okay.

I hopped back down and went to the mirror in my little workshop to examine myself in full costume. I'd forgone the mandibles on my new mask and gone with opaque purple lenses the same oblong shape as Ashley's "eye lenses," which were made using some kind of tinker-made "microplastics" that were super-durable and never needed to be cleaned. speaking of things that were super-durable, my spiders, given the name Latrodectus heberticus by the labs and "Weaver's Little Helpers" by PR, had been tested quite thoroughly-in addition to my having a much, much wider control range for them(and each one themselves generating a small control radius of their own,) they had like ten different venoms that seemed to have variable effects, and most importantly, their silk was practically indestructible. While testing them, they'd had me make them weave sheets and cords of silk to test the tear and tensile strength of my spiders' secretions and had found that not even sniper-fire could pierce a sheet, it didn't burn at any temperature the labs could safely replicate, and Armsmaster had had to use something special he'd bee working on, nano somethings, before he could cut it. Ashley had compared it to the claws of some guy called Wolverine. Needless to say, they'd canceled the order for Darwin's bark spiders.

I'd forgone the use of armored panels in favor of extra layers of silk in the torso and other strategic locations as well as some padding and insulation-we'd already combat tested the main body, taking a high caliber bullet left me with a nasty bruise, one that healed in record time, but that was about it. I had a utility belt and hidden pockets that, in the field, would be equipped with police-grade pepper spray, a taser, emergency EpiPens, a baton, and other basic and common sense equipment that I could carry with me easily, and thanks to some special pigments the silk was a uniformly pure white, save for the belt and the spider-emblem, matching Ashley's, on the chest which were the same purple and my eye-lenses. Thus, I matched my spiders. The boots went up well past my ankles and were soft soled, while the gloves went just halfway up my forearm. There were vents in the fingertips, so that I could, actually, I needed to test those. I help out my hand, fingers held straight and flexed and then-thwip!

From my fingertips came four small spurts of spider-silk. Well, chemically it was similar enough to be called spider-silk, but it as stronger-not as strong as my spiders', but a good fistful of strands bundled up nice and tight could support several times my weight. Also, it crumbled to dust after an out. Armsmaster had no idea how or why.

"Have I told you that I'm super jealous that you can do that?" Ashley said.

"This will be the third time," I said with a smile. "Come on."

She hopped from ceiling to floor and her symbiote shifted to form her mask and we left the workshop I'd been provided with for Wards HQ.

"I'm done with mandatory monitor duty," Ashley said. She'd been assigned a few hours of monitor duty every day since I woke up as punishment for running off and fighting the entire parahuman portion of the ABB by herself. That, and not being allowed to go on patrols until she finished with it.

"That's nice," I said. She was clearly working her way to something.

"So since your costumes done," she said, "maybe we could sign up for a pat-"

"Weaver," came a sudden interruption. A clerk or an agent or something. "They want you in the lab."

"Okay," I answered, and changed directions with Ashley following me.

"Yeah," I said to Ashley, "we can sign up for a patrol in a bit."

The labs were much closer to the workshop than Wards HQ. It took no time at all to get there.

A scientist-one whose name I'd yet to learn, despite the number of times I'd been down here since waking up-asked me: "could you roll up a sleave?"

I blinked. "Why?"

"Oh, sorry," he said, "I thought I told Wallace to tell you why we want you: it's always concerning for various branches of the PRT when a Cape under its umbrella has their powers change. Usually," he explained, "it's because they experianced a secondary trigger event or because something damaged their Corona Polletia or Gemma. However, with you, there is no evidence of either. But," he continued, "the parahumans from Cuddlebug's universe operate on different principals-they all have some kind of genetic mutations by her claims, and while Jorogumo is only one data point, she supports this assertion."

"Go on," I said.

"And you gained your new powers after you were bitten by Jorugumo, and Panacea tried and failed to cure you of her venom. Considering that one of your new powers, the silk bio-generation, is very similar to one of Jorogumo's powers, the people upstairs want us to take a DNA sample from you and compare it to Jorogumo to see if Panacea didn't accidentally merge some of Jorogumo's DNA with your own... It wouldn't explain everything, but it'd give us a start and we might be able to prepare for some... frightening possibilities."

"Could you please explain what those possibilities are?" He was dancing around something, trying to treat me like a kid. I'd had enough of that 'not now kiddo' bullshit a year and a half ago when I was trying to get the staff of Winslow to believe me about the shit that Emma, Sophia, and Madison were doing. Facing more of that is exactly why I didn't join the Wards as soon as I realized I had powers.

The scientist gulped, "Jorogumo is a monster cape and also highly feral, it's questionable if she's even sapient," he explained. "If you've somehow been infected with her DNA, it's possible that you'll further mutate into a similar organism. Knowing about the possibility ahead of time would let us know that we need to devote resources to managing anymore... extreme physical alterations you might undergo, additional arms or chelicerae growing in, for example, or alterations to your mental state."

"You're afraid I might turn into a monster and or go feral," I said in deadpan, "and you want to know if you need to spend time working on mutation cures or measures to put me down. Why can't you just say that?"

"Or ways for PR to spin you suddenly becoming less humanoid or ways to help preserve your identity," he said hastily, "it's not a binary problem-it's not just best and worst case scenario here and-" He was interrupted by Ashly suddenly appearing next to me and grabbing my left arm with both of hers.

"If Ta-Weaver gets hurt because of you, we'll eat your brains." The man flinched.

"Cuddlebug," I said gently, "it's fine." What happened to make her flip-flop on using that as a threat? I tugged gently and she let go of my arm. "Doctor, if I refuse, what happens?" I wasn't sure what the risk of mutating actually was, and I'm not sure I really care about where my powers come from if I don't already have them. I wasn't exactly happy with potentially giving someone a way to weaken me if they found that my DNA had been changed and started working on countermeasures... How am I to know that it wouldn't take away all my new powers instead of just the "bad ones" I might get? Or that if I go full monster, they wouldn't just kill me instead of trying to cure me?

"Well," he said with a gulp, "this is a medical test and you do have the right to refuse medical treatment and while your father consented to letting us perform tests on you as long as they were no-more invasive that an MRI or blood test I cannot preform any further tests on you, however" he continued, "the standard contract the PRT uses for heroes, Wards and Protectorate, indicates that the PRT can request that their capes submit themselves to certain medical tests if their superiors believe that their health was put at risk by something they were exposed to on duty and can optionaly prevent a cape from patrolling if they refuse to comply. You haven't been ordered to submit for this test, as far as I know, but you might be later if you refuse now and refusing then could have consequences."

Shit. I could refuse and see what happens. Worst case scenario, if I get ordered to comply and they refuse to let me patrol if I don't I can quit... actually, maybe I should doublecheck my contract, but... Eh... The problem with the worst case scenario is that Dad and I can't take care of Ashley without that 'fostering a Ward' stipend the PRt's giving us, and if I quit, she'll quit... Even if I convinced her to stay, they might try to take her since she's technically a Ward of the PRT to try and bring me back into the fold with a contract more favorable to them... I mean, Director Piggot had been nice and reasonable with me, but Ashley was valuable to them and I was valuable to Ashley, and I wasn't sure if that was how she normally acted or if that was just her offering a carrot before the pulling out the stick.

Fuck it. I pulled off my glove and rolled up my sleeve. Note: It's really hard to roll up a sleeve made of indestructible spider-silk. "Let's just get this over with." If this came back to bite me in the ass later, I'd deal with it then.

He had me sit down and did the thing with the giant rubber band to get a vein popped up. "Now um... I'm sorry, but with your enhanced tissue density I'm going to have to use a specialized needle so this might be a little painful,"

He then came at me with a needle about three times the size of any needle I'd ever seen before, and suddenly there was a loud thump on the wall. I turned and saw that Ashley had jumped and was now clinging to the wall with her hands behind her.

"...Are you," I asked, "afraid of needles?"

She was silent for a minute, and then slowly said " _Nnoooo_."

"Then maybe you should come down from there," I said.

She climbed down, slowly, and walked over by the door. She was very deliberately not looking at the scientist or I.

"Actually," I began to lie, "I'm a little afraid of needles. Do you think you could come over here and hold my hand, please?"

She nodded without a word and then came over and took my offered hand. Then she took a look at me and the scientist and the needle and then looked away. That not being enough, she then covered her eyes. She wasn't even the one getting the needle... I really hope she never needs a shot or something.

The scientist did what he was to do and I left with Ashley, still holding her hand. "Come on," I told her, "let's see about getting that patrol."

 **Spider-Friends, go for it!**

 _Why?_

(Because I grew up on them and I'm still pissed that they got killed in Spider-Verse.)

Oh my god I was following Armsmaster's motorcycle on foot and keeping up with him-Ashley and I running and leaping and bounding across rooftops and between buildings-even crossing the streets in a single jump, building to building, a time or two when we had big enough buildings on one side. It was flashy and showy and not at all practical, but it was fun!

...Also, it was supposed to be flashy. Cuddlebug was officially my sidekick, it had been a released statement that we'd "helped" Armsmaster take out Lung the first time, I'd taken out a villain on my first ever official mission, and Vista had leaked that Ashley had taken out Lung with one punch and also defeated Oni Lee and Jorogumo. The buzz on the street, apparently, was that the two of us were the new "rising stars" of Wards ENE and the public wanted to see us.

So our first official patrol was us, along with Armsmaster(the high-profile authority figure we were already slightly associated with), on a low-risk patrol past a few venues where we were likely to be seen. It was basically just a public relations mission, but it was a tolerable one. Tomorrow we'd be at a press release, give some rehearsed lines, take some questions from the crowd, some of which were plants, and then it'd all be official.

Armsmaster stopped and pulled into the parking lot of a Locos Tacos. This was a scheduled stop, apparently, the manager was the cousin of the Deputy Director's secretary and they'd managed to secure the use of the parking lot for a few low-risk things like this. Ashley and I lept from our perches to the ground and met him in the parking lot.

"Now girls," he said loud enough for a handful of nearby pedestrians to hear, "the most important thing to keep in mind for these patrols is to always be aware of your surroundings." Yeah, we'd been lectured on this already, but that wasn't the point. The Wards were supposed to be superpowered Scouts, basically, kids learning to be Superheroes. So, 'experianced Hero shows newbies the ropes' is a readily built cover for anything: As far as anyone could tell, this was just a live training exercise and not blatant PR. "Tell me what you see around here?"

I made a show of looking around: There was supposed to be a PRT agent in an obviously cheap 'costume' to make them look like a Villain(I think they'd gone with the name 'Professor Evil') hidden away around here. We'd look around, Ashley would call out "hey what's that" and he'd appear and ham it up, get 'foiled' by Armsmaster before 'escaping,' and then we'd move along to the next location for our next PR-stunt-disguised-as-training event.

"We smell blood," Ashley said. Armsmaster and I both snapped to attention. "A lot of blood." I started gathering up as many bugs as I could to get a view of the area. I should have been doing it this whole time, but we didn't want to freak anyone out.

"I'm so sorry," a feminine sing-song voice called out. I turned in time to see her step out of the alleyway. A girl, eighteen at the oldest, dressed in a blood-spatter lab coat and black rubber gloves with a similarly stained set of scrubs on underneath along with a belt full of surgical equipment, needles, and cutlery. She had blonde hair pulled back in a pony-tail and she'd clearly been cute... Once. Her face had obvious stitching scars-one running from right cheek to left eyebrow across the bridge of her nose, and two on either end of her mouth to accentuate her demented smile.

"So so very sorry," she continued, "but that PRT guy in the wacky costume can't come out and play right now."

Pedestrians started freaking out, people on the street took off running. Armsmaster packed his bike and stepped off, drawing his halberd, only for a 'thwip' to sound out and it get yanked away by an orange-red strand. I whipped my head around to see that standing on a roof across from us was a monstrous figure who had not been there when we got here: An orange-red, crystalline humanoid with nine heads, eight monstrous with serrated smiles and no lips or cheeks to hide their fangs, while the ninth appeared to be some kind of wolf. It had four clawed arms and legs that were somewhere between a man's and a dog's, as well as tentacles of red slimy good oozing from it's back. It casually tossed the Halberd into the Alley behind us and-pulse in the back of my head, I had to jump. I noticed that Ashley jumped as well, someone had tossed what looked like tear gas grenades at us but the smoke rushing out was pink and coming out too fast for me to avoid, too fast to be tear gas.

I landed on my feet and started hacking out a lung. I could hear Ashley and Armsmaster coughing to-if it could get past Mister Snuggles, then...

"Do you like it?" The singsong speaking mad-doctor asked. "I cooked it up nice and special to take care of those nasty spider-senses you guys have. The hardest part was cooking up something that could get past that contemptable parasite and bypass it's host's chemical resistance, but I managed." She giggled like a girl half her age, "Now I bet you're thinking, 'mysterious person who I've never met, why didn't you just cook up a poison to kill the both of us?' And yeah, I could have done that easy, but after what you're gonna do to me there'd be no fun in killing you the easy way."

"That," came a pretentious sounding voice, "and The Trickster's Avatar was promised to me." From behind us walked a man in a suit and tie, his long black hair

"Who," I said between coughs, "are you people?"

"It doesn't matter," the mad-doctor said. "You'll be a little too dead to care soon."

Armsmaster regained his composure first. "I'm at test-site B. We have a code 12 and we need backup, now. Girls, you need to run at the earliest opportunity."

There was a landing and at least a dozen voices in unison speaking, "There is no escape from us. This is the Death of Weaver and the Cuddle-" They were cut off by what sounded like a laser blast, followed by some kind of sizzling. Suddenly a giant gold and blue hand was wrapped around me and I was quickly yanked back several yards and gently set on the ground. Once my senses caught up with me, I saw... A late teenager dressed like Cuddlebug gripping Ashley in a tight bearhug.

"Seriously, Cuddle?" came a feminine voice with a slight lisp. I got over my shock and saw that there were others. The one that had spoken was... Well, she wasn't ugly, per se, in fact she was kind of cute once you got past the fact that she was dark green, covered in scales, big and thick on her bare back, arms, and legs but small thin on her face showing a slightly lighter green skin beneath, as well as her slightly too long, slightly too pointy nose, red eyes, fangs, long, pointy nosferatu ears, the short and thin spikes down her back, and the thin, whip-like tail that ended in a spade. She was dressed in a sleeveless black leotard that had been modified to expose the upper, spiked half of her back and had blond hair, tinted slightly green, in a pixie cut. Then I noticed that she was hunched over, ever so slightly, and that her arms were just slightly too long, hands just slightly too big with fingers just slightly too spidery and ending in small but sharp claws. On her shoulder was a darker, thicker layer of scales shaped like a handprint.

"Oh come on Grem-Grem," the older Cuddlebug said in a more mature version of Ashley's dual voice, "when are we ever going to get the chance to hug ourselves again?"

"Still. Time and a place, Cuddle," Grem-Grem said. She sounded a little exasperated.

"You're crushing us," My Cuddlebug said all of a sudden.

"Ah fine," the older one said. Then she sat Ashley down gently.

I turned my attention to the rest of the new arrivals. There was a girl-mid-teens, maybe? Sixteen at the oldest with dark red skin and good muscle tone. She was dressed in a one-piece dress of dark green that started as a short-sleeved top(one that clearly had something uneath that augmented her bust) and bloomed into a thigh-length skirt once it passed a simple black belt at her waist. She had what looked like a hard plastic helmet, in the same dark green that covered everything from the back from the neck up, but her face was exposed, discounting an opaque black visor that blocked my view of her from the nose up. She had a grim expression on her visible face that didn't quite match her pinchable cheeks. she had calf-length boots and forearm length gloves, again the same dark green, and her outstretched hands were engulfed in spears of some kind of red energy.

Next to the Young Champion of Christmas was a woman in a very nice black tuxedo that seemed to have been tailored to her perfectly, as well as a feathered black domino-type mask, like you'd see at a masquerade ball or fancy New Years Eve party and a black silken cape with a hood that covered her hair. There were strange symbols embroidered all over the cape in a shiny golden thread, and she had her arms held out and crossed in front of her, her right hand(on the left) held up in a "rocker horns" look and her left held like she was about to karate chop someone.

While I was taking this all in, a seemingly muscular man in armor flew over, carrying Armsmaster. The armor was not unlike a knight's mail, a shiny silver on his arms and legs, dark blue in the torso, leading up to a winged Viking helmet that left his face exposed only from the mouth down. He was cleanly shaven. He had a flowing red cape and in his free hand(As Armsmaster was held in but one powerful arm) was a decently sized stone hammer.

He set Armsaster down gently next to me and said to him, "I apologize for the chaotic nature of this meeting, but there shall be plenty of time for proper introductions once these villains hath been smote."

"Yeah," came a familiar voice... Was that my voice? "Especially since we've been here ten minutes and already fucked up with not changing the past." The Older... The apparent Time traveling me walked in last. I'm not sure where she'd been, and I'd apparently added pointy pauldrons and a more high-tech utility belt to the costume at some point in the future, but otherwise, she was just a taller, slightly more muscular me.

"Language," Grem-Grem said, "there is a child present," she said with a gesture to my Cuddlebug.

"Anyway," my apparent future-self said, "we're sorry about the mess. This is all on us. We'll deal with it." She took some kind of martial arts stance that I wasn't familiar with and took a step forward before the Future Cuddlebug interrupted her.

"Wait, Weaver, you didn't say the thing."

"But we're all already here," My Future Self countered.

"Not the point," the older Ashley replied. "C'mon, please?"

Future Weaver sighed. "Okay, fine, for you." She cleared her throat just as the Nine-headed monster growled. "Avengers, Assemble!"

And the six future heroes charged just as Ashley squealed like a little girl who got a unicorn for Christmas.


	17. Chapter 17

**The Opposite of Carnage.**

The first thing I noticed when my ribs stopped hurting from Big Me's hug was that she was really big with nice muscles, like She-Hulk, and her claws were three inches long and didn't have any blue lines on them.

Then I noticed that she and the guy in the suit were going at it like a pair of rabid squirrels, kicking and punching and clawing at each other much faster than Mister Snuggles and I could move right now while the one that she'd called Grem-Grem was on guard and taking shots at mister suit when he could.

The Christmassy-one and lady with the cape were shooting blasts of fire and some kind of red energy at the nine-headed monster thing.

Big-Weaver was fighting the mad-doctor lady, who'd sprouted six really thin Doc Ock tentacles with surgery knives at the tips. Big-Weaver was really good at dodging. She wasn't using bugs for some reason, and mad-doctor lady was just as good at dodging Big-Weaver's punches, kicks, and web-lines.

Knight-Thor was floating above the battlefield. He was looking for something and-where did that tree come from? And why were its branches twisted into a fist? The sudden tree was moving and bending fast, but with one swing of the mighty Mjolnir, the tree shattered.

Then a monster appeared out of nowhere and jumped on him. He elbowed it off and it fell to the ground... But landed on its feet and six of its eight hands.

And then I got a good look at her. She... they... it was Jorogumo. Or it used to be, anyway, before someone else had sewn a white girl, maybe just a little older than Taylor, with dark brown or black hair, to her back. Like, the stitches were at the other girl's waist and she didn't have legs, she was bent at a crooked angle so it was like she was constantly looking over Jorogumo's shoulder... Except even from this far away I could see that the girl's eyes were dead, and there was a big ugly Frankenstein scar on her forehead, and every inch of her bare skin was pale like a ghost's.

"Charlotte!" Shouted the mad-science lady. "Ignore Thor, kill the kids!"

"Yes, Mommy," both of its mouths said at the same time in a pair of dead hypno-zombie voices. Then it started skittering at us, really fast, but really shakey, its arms and legs twitching with every step and the girl in it's back flopping every-which-way.

" _Subject host_ need _to flee_ ," Mister Snuggles whispered in my mind. I couldn't move though. I... I... I couldn't stop staring. I... " _Subject host please not vomit in subject symbiote's bio-matter._ "

The monster stopped suddenly and threw out its arms and sent six web-lines right at me, only for Grem-Grem to suddenly land in the way and get three strands around each arm herself. The monster pulled and sliced the scaley girl's arms right off in three big hunks. There was a lot of blood, lots and lots, and I made Mister Snuggles uncover my mouth so that he wouldn't get mad at me when I blew chunks. I'd eaten Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs for breakfast and the milk and cereal did not feel good coming back up.

"Shouldn't the smoke have dissipated by now?" That was Armsmaster. I looked at him and then opened my eyes. He hadn't moved from where he was either and neither had Weaver. That's right, that nasty smoke was all still there and... I made myself look back and -oh Good, Grem-Grem's arms grew back. She was fighting Charlotte and...

"Guys?" I asked, "wasn't the smoke pink a second ago?" It was white now.

Then Weaver and I suddenly got yanked in the air, some kind of black aura around us, and... The white smoke started compressing itself and suddenly there was another stitched together monster. This one was four young adults and teenagers, two boys and two girls, one a redhead, one brown haired, and two blonds, wearing red, yellow, blue and white fabric all stitched together haphazardly. Crooked body, four heads, four arms, none of them matched... There was something familiar about it, and...

It hit me when two of its mismatched hands lit up in golden light and one was pointed "...Oh, my Gosh... What the heck did you do to the Power Pack!?"

"They're just clones, you big- _mmmph!_ " Mad Doctor Lady said right as Big-Weaver managed to web up her mouth. I think. I couldn't really see, but that's what it sounded like.

The monster made of Power Pack clones was about to blast me and Weaver good when suddenly Thor appeared behind it and smacked upside one of its heads with Mjolnir and it dropped us. I couldn't flip. Something was wrong with me and-oof!

I'm pretty sure that there weren't airbags in the middle of the street a second ago. I look up and saw the lady in the suit and cape standing between the two airbags, and Weaver was on the other side and looked okay.

"That's five," Suit-Lady said, "which means that Snow Leopard won't be far."

Then he just suddenly appeared. A naked old dude with snow-white skin and leopard spots all over him. He appeared right next to Mad-Doctor Lady and put one hand on her shoulder before dragging the other across the webs at her mouth, making them disappear.

"To heck with this!" Mad Doctor Lady said. Snow Leopard scratched her on the face and made her bleed, and then she said "when blood is shed, the Staff of One emerges!" and big magicky staff solved its way out of her chest. She grabbed it and shouted "Sinister Six, retreat!" and all the bad guys vanished with a bamf.

All the future heroes landed and came back over to us. Big-Me immediately hugged Grem-Grem before pulling three tube thingies out of her Mister Snuggles. Or her arm. One of the two.

"Okay," she said walking up to me and Weaver and shrinking a bit to be less muscly. "That anti-spider-sense gas is really insidious. It doesn't just turn Spider-Sense off, it also saps the strength from your body, even if you don't have a spider-sense, and that kind of sneaks up on you till you can't move and you didn't even notice yourself getting weaker." She held one of the tube-thingies, an inhaler with a big C on it, up to my face. "Luckily, we have a cure. Mini-Mes, I'm gonna need you to open wide and then take a deep breath on three." It was kind of getting hard to breath and my mouth was still uncovered from when I threw up so I just did what she said.

"A-Cuddlebug, wait, we don't-"

"As of today, Weaver, we still have that pair of Armsmaster brand underwear in our closet somewhere," Big Weaver said, "believe we're you guys and some friends from the future now?" Weaver didn't answer.

"One, two, three" big me said and I breathed and-The medicine tasted like strawberries! I was already starting to feel a teensy bit better. "That should completely fix you in about five minutes and if we remember right this will be the first time since forever that we took medicine that actually worked." Then she handed the other two inhalers to Weaver and Armsmaster, who took them. "you two are bigger, so the gas shouldn't have sapped as much of your strength yet so you can do it yourselves," big me said bluntly.

Armsmaster hesitated, but by the time Weaver had rolled her mask up past her mouth(it started at her neck) he decided and took the medicine. He grimaced. I guess he doesn't like strawberries.

"Five minutes doesn't seem like the best timing for a mid-combat drug," he said as he started to push himself to his feet.

"Well, it'd be instant if we injected the full dose directly into the bloodstream," Grem-Grem said, "but _sssomebody_ is a little baby when it comes to needles."

"Not afraid of needles," I said just as big me said, "You spend a year getting harvested for MGH and then talk to us about needles."

"You have pierced ears and two tattoos, Cuddle," the scaley girl said.

"That's different, Grem-Grem."

"Anyway," Suit-Lady said loud enough to get everyone's attention, "they chose now to attack because there was a traffic accident that forced Miss Militia and Triumph to come around the long way, So Armsy you might as well call and cancel that backup because we'll be long gone by the time they get here." She was doing the Doctor Strange thing with both hands, "and that should take care of any recordings of us that didn't exist last time."

Armsmaster looked right at Suit-Lady. "Who are you people?"

"In a minute, when we have more privacy," Suit Lady answered, "now cancel the backup call."

"...Dispatch, Code 12 resolved, cancel reinforcements, I'll secure the Perimeter, get a cleanup crew here Asap."

Future Thor had left at some point and had come back with Armsmaster's ax-thingy and... where did all the police tape come from? "T'is already done for you," he said as he handed the ax to Armsmaster.

"Okay," said the Christmassy one, "can we get going now? I mean, we don't have to do everything that happened last time, right?"

"No," Big Weaver said, " we don't, Power House, but we don't have time to get away from her so we might as well-"

"Get away from who?" my Weaver asked. I could hear buzzing. I think there was a wasp nest nearby and they all seemed agitated.

Big Weaver raised three fingers and slowly lowered them. When they were all down, a lady in a black outfit and a mask/visor that only showed her eyes made a three-point landing right in front of us and behind the guys from the future. She got up and I saw that she had a tower emblem on her chest.

"Alexandria," Armsmaster said as he snapped to attention. Weaver did kind of a dorky salute thing.

"Armsmaster," the new Hero called, "what's going on here? A rather powerful precog practically had a stroke telling me to get here ASAP."

"Give our regards to Miss Fortune and the rest of the Kettle Club," Big Weaver said without turning around, "but this is our mess and we don't need your help cleaning it up, Alex."

"Excuse me," the new woman said all angry all of a sudden, "who are you?"

"Avengers Bet," Big Me said, "Founding Chapter. The people who know that they don't need your help cleaning up their messes because we've been cleaning up yours. Our bad guys are the problem, we've got more experience dealing with them, we know for a fact that we can handle it because we did it the last time, this is a stable time-loop and you didn't help last time so you trying to help could destroy time, not that you probably care you, big dumb control freak, and honestly none of us like you so you're not invited to the party."

"So please," Suit Lady said, "just go back to LA and tell your Precog that we've got it under control... Or I could lock your powers for a few hours and teleport you there, your choice."

Alexandria clenched a fist, "just who the-"

"Begone!" Suit Lady said and with a gesture, Alexandria was bamfed away.

"She's gonna be mad later," I said. It was kind of obvious.

"Yeah, she is," Weaver said, "but unless yours is dumber than ours, her Precog friend is going to explain things to her and nothing will come of it. Maga?"

"On it," Suit-Lady said. Another gesture and suddenly all of us were in some kind of space-ship or something. I looked out the big window in the front and apparently, we were underwater.

"Can someone please explain just what the hell is going on?" Armsmaster asked. He sounded grumpy.

"Cliffnotes notes: We're from the future," the little one, Power House, said. "In the upcoming months, a couple of us get upgrades to our powers based on stuff that's super common in Cuddlebug's universe and, and in a few years some serious shit is going to go down causing a bunch of people to break away from the PRT, some of whom like us are legitimately recognized, others not so much. Our Group consists mostly of Former Protectorate and Wards who are sick of the red tape coupled with a couple of former minor villains who are sick of playing cops and robbers and want to go legit but couldn't under the old system due to... a few oversights or bits of bad info poisoning the well."

"Weaver is the Leader of our Branch and the overall battlefield commander for Avengers Bet," Big Me said, "but Maga handes most of the day to day stuff and is the Overall person in charge since Weaver is more of a 'good idea in a crisis' person but not such a 'day to day doing the budget' person, ya get it? Anyway, Alexandria really didn't like that the PRT was splintering, and well..."

"Ziz took advantage," Suit-Lady explained, "a couple of compromised PRT agents turned Alexandria's tactics back on her, aired some of her dirty laundry, and gaslighted her pretty bad and... You don't want to know."

"You know me," Big Weaver said, "I'm still Weaver."

"We have traveled the stars and across the great Web," Big Me said, "we've touched upon and used mystical energies both divine and profane and been purged of our corruption by the Klyntar Hivemind. Avenger, Agent of the Cosmos, and master of over a dozen kinds of Super Power, We are... The Cuddle Cosmic!" Apparently, I became a huge ham at some point.

"Maga, Sorceress Supreme of Earth Bet," suit-lady said.

"You know there are only about ten real sorcerers on Earth Bet," the one Big Weaver called Power House said, "and two-thirds of them are disqualified for being from other Universes. That title's not as impressive as you think it is."

"I beat Myrrdin in a Wizard duel for the title," Maga snapped back. "I've earned it."

"Whatever, anyway I'm Power House. In addition to my original powers, I can generate an infinite amount of energy in the form of Heat and Radiation, but the energy doesn't stick around, I usually use it to blast things."

"I am The Noble Thor, well met," said Thor.

"And I'm the Gremlin," Grem-Grem said, "Cuddle calls me Grem-Grem, anyone else does and I'll tear your head off."

"Anyway, The Sinister Six... They've got massive Hate Boners for the six of us in particular... Well, four of them do." Maga explained. "I don't think Pack Attack and... Charlotte are capable of enough emotion to hate."

"Their Leader calls herself Franken Franny," Weaver explained, "I think she got the name from a manga or something, anyway as far as we can tell she and Snow Leopard are counterparts of Bonesaw and The Siberian from a parallel Multiverse where a small number of people swapped places. Apparently, in their Timeline, Jack Slash was replaced by some guy named Calculus."

"What happened to your Bonesaw?" Armsmaster asked suddenly.

"She's dead and never coming back," The Gremlin said firmly. "...Look, you guys don't need me for this, I'm going to go take a nap." She sort of slinked off. She didn't seem happy.

"Um," I said, "is she gonna be okay?"

"She'll be fine," Cuddle Cosmic said, "It's just that Bonesaw is the reason why Grem-Grem is all cold-blooded. We'll go cuddle with her later, that'll make her feel better. Anyway," Big Me continued "The guy in the suit is Dean," Cuddle Cosmic, "Um... Not the one you guys know, a different one. He's an occultist who has a crush on Weaver's civ ID. They met in college, he found out who she was, and he thinks he's the reincarnation of the Spider-god of Evolution-"

"-He's not, we've checked," Maga added

"Thank you, and he thinks that Weaver is the Avatar of a Spider-Goddess called the Trickster and wants to knock her up to bring about a race of Spider-Demigods to wipe out humanity." Gross. "Franny did some stuff to him to make him super fast and super strong."

"...Is there a place where I can go throw up?" My Weaver asked.

"Down the hall, first door to the left," Maga said.

"The crystal beast was once a creature called Amalgam, an attempt at hybridizing the DNA of the Hybrid symbiotes and all nine of the beings who hath hosted them, chimed in Thor. "The resulting creature was completely unstable, utterly insane, and quite helpless-pitiable, and my sympathies go out to it. When it was discovered, it was located to the PArahuman asylum, the very same one that the creature Jorogumo was recently confined to in this timeline... where it was easy prey for a race of Crystalline organisms called poisons."

"Poisons have a weird genetic quirk," Cuddle Cosmic explained, "if they touch a symbiote, the symbiote gets stronger but they bond to it permanently. They absorb it, and it's host if they have one. The host dies and the symbiote is silenced, becoming the poison's slave, and the poison gets the powers of the symbiote and it's host if it has one. Luckily, each one can only absorb one. A bunch of them showed up to invade Earth Bet, we wiped them out, and the one that Amalgam was the only survivor. Well, it and one that ate a Version of Doctor Doom that was also Venom, but Poisoned Doom ran away." I gasped, that one sounded scary. "All that Poisoned Amalgam wants is to kill us in revenge for not letting its friends eat us. I mean, honestly, it's an entire species of murderous sociopaths that crave power, would anybody just let one eat them?" I shook my head. "Oh, and Mini-Mes? If you see someone who looks, acts, and sounds like Mommy in a dark alley and tells you that everything is gonna be alright and to come give her a hug? It's not Mommy, it's a poison trying to trick and eat you. Don't touch it, that's how they get you, just kill it and run. When they haven't eaten a symbiote, they're weak to bullets, dumpsters, and hellfire." I gulped.

"And that just leaves the zombies," Big Weaver added. "Pack Attack is stitched together from clones of a family of Superheroes with the ability to manipulate their matter density, absorb matter and energy and return it as concussive blasts, manipulate gravity, and fly and leave a rainbow trail. Charlotte-"

"Charlotte is patched together from Jorogumo and a girl called Klara," Maga interrupted. "Klara was cloned from a girl called Klara Prast, a time traveler from 1907 with the power to control, empower, and grow plants. Jorogumo escaped the asylum the same night the Poisons got Amalgam, Franny got her hands on her and suped her up, which led directly into..." Maga paused. "I'm sorry, I knew Klara. A group of people who were all cloned from the same group and didn't get as screwed up by the Clone programming too bad all got together, Franken-Franny attacked them and killed two, spiriting away with Klara's body and the Staff of One and used Klara's body to turn Jorogumo into Charlotte."

"Back up a second," Armsmaster said, "What's the Staff of One?"

"The Staff of One is a powerful magical artifact that even The Hell Lords fear," Cuddle Cosmic answered, "per one of Mister Snuggles' old hosts, a clone of some demon-chick, it has the power to cast any spell, no matter how complex, with relative ease and significantly less power than normal with the caveat that you have to use a specific phrase to activate it and that it will only use each spell once-though identical spells can be created if you're willing to use a differant phrase, but then you've burned that phrase instead. Trying to use the same spell with the same phrase results in a completely random spell. It bonds to and hides in the soul of the people who wield it..."

"And as it turns out," Maga picked up, "you clone its master, you clone the staff, too."

"Franny used it to enchant a time machine," Big Weaver finished, "and came back in time to deal with us before we could become as big a threat as we did."

"Except Time Travel doesn't work that way-you can change the past but that's guarantee that anything will have changed when you get back," Power House Added. "We know, this isn't our first rodeo with this stuff."

"Well, it kinda is," Cuddle Cosmic added, "for little Weaver and our Mini-Mes."

"To continue," Thor went on, "when we realized what they'd done, we traveled back to stop them."

"The stuff we said though," Maga added, "it's not set in stone. We're mostly just doing what Cuddle and Weaver remember from last time since we know it'll work."

"But a few things are already different," Big Weaver finished, "Armsmaster didn't get drugged last time."

"Anyway," Maga said, "since the exposition is done, I'm gonna go close a few stable time loops-you know, give my past self a sports almanac and some stock tips, that kind of thing" and then she bamfed away.

"Yeah, I need to power down for a bit," Power House said, "and since Weaver and Cuddle don't remember finding out who the rest of us are until we got upgraded, that means I need a bit of privacy."

"Yeah, um... We're basically done," Cuddle Cosmic said. "With Maga gone, we're gonna have to take you straight up. It'll take ten minutes, we'll drop you at the Rig. We, er, I'm gonna go check on my bestest bud. Mister Snuggles can handle the drive up, he's good at the controls." Wait, what?

Big Ashley then literally stepped out of Mister Snuggles. She was wearing a grey outfit. Like, the shorts and the top that exposes your arm and belly that you see women wearing in commercials for gym memberships and stuff. She didn't even have shoes. She was pretty, had tight muscles and a six-pack, and had diamond studs in her ears and a heart on her left forearm with a list of names in it but I could only make out "Mister Snuggles" and "Taylor" before she crossed her arms and covered it. Her right bicep had a scaley handprint with long fingers on it.

Weaver had gotten back from where she said she was going to throw up and stopped, looking between Big Weaver and Future Me for a second. "If it makes you feel better, it's not natural," Big Ashley said, "Mister Snuggles was exposed to a lot of chemicals designed to make you better in a bunch of ways, after six years they start to build up in you."

Then she walked off down the one hallway there was in here.

"Um, what was Big Me talking about?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter," both Weavers said at the same time.

Future Mister Snuggles pulled himself up into a what kinda looked a lot like the first Venom, the bad one that wasn't the one that made a bunch of people think that Spider-Man ate squirrels. The only difference was that he was in Mister Snuggles' colors and he had mine and Weaver's Spider-Emblem instead of Venom's. He smilled at me in a way that I don't think was meant to be creepy, then gently patted me on the head and walked to the front of the thing and set down in the chair in front of the steering wheel and the ship we were in started to move.

"Okay," Armsmaster said after a little bit. "Let's say, for the sake of argument, that I believe everything you've just told me and that you and this Sinister Six aren't in cahoots and aren't a bunch of Tinkers or Strangers pulling a con. What do you expect me to do? You've antagonized and arguably assaulted one of the founding members of the Protectorate, clearly lied about her involvement causing a universe-destroying paradox, and arguably kidnapped myself and two Wards under my supervision. You have to understand how bad this looks, right?"

"God, I've missed this," Big Weaver. "It's weird what you miss, but... This. You, Armsmaster, being kind of a dick but still meaning well. We haven't gotten anything quite like that since... Well, it's not something you should get concerned about."

"What we expect," Thor said, "is for you to use the experience and judgment that earned you your position of leadership to decide what the right course of action is, then follow it."

"For what it's worth," Big Weaver continued, "if your Alexandria did was ours did when she got back to LA, you'll be getting a call from Director Piggot about fifteen minutes after you get back to your lab asking you about us and demanding that you try to keep an eye on us. Last time, our future selves agreed to meet with the Local Protectorate and the Director and we plan to again if the same thing happens this time."

Armsmaster grunted but didn't respond.

Weaver, my Weaver, was standing next to me kinda awkwardly. I took her hand. Then I thought about something and had to ask, "um, is there something going one between future Me and The Gremlin? I mean, if there is then this has got to be absolutely the weirdest way to find out that you're gay _ever._ " My Weaver twisted her head to look at me all of a sudden while future Weaver burst out laughing. "What? I can't be the only one who was thinking it."

*end*

AN: They're not. They're just really close friends and Future Ashley never outgrew hugging, especially since she has a besty who is literally cold-blooded and thus likes to cuddle so as to leach other people's body heat. As for whether either of them swings that way... It doesn't really matter because this isn't a shipping story and they're just kids in the main timeline


	18. Chapter 18

**The Opposite of Carnage**

Emily Piggot signed her approval of a contract renegotiation and sighed. After her time as a field agent, After Ellisburg and the horrors of Nilbog, after the all the stress of trying to manage the parahuman scene in a wretched hive like Brockton Bay with its dragons and Nazis, it seemed that one Danny Hebert would be the one finally killed her. He wasn't acting maliciously though but... He had given her a particular perception, that he felt that at some point he'd failed his daughter and was trying to make up for it and do right by her going forward and that he, in turn, wanted to do right by the child he'd agreed to foster. It'd be an admirable trait if it hadn't caused her wallet to ache in sympathy.

She wanted to strangle the supply and costuming department. Just... Just strangle every last one of them. Weaver and Cuddlebug's custom contracts had been surprisingly easy to give into. Weaver and her father had been more than willing to accept less than her silk costumes were worth in additional compensation in exchange for help getting out of what The Director assumed to be a bad situation at school and a few relatively minor concessions that let weaver feel that her independence was preserved. Cuddlebug received the same extra pay and concessions at Weaver's insistence, but other than a polite request to be allowed to go to school with Weaver if she could do well enough on tests to get into high school years early(permitted only to humor her, honestly what were the chances of that happening?) Cuddlebug didn't really seem to want anything-she'd admitted later that she'd have paid them for "superhero lessons" and was just happy that she got to use her powers to help people.

Unfortunately for the PRT, and quite fortunately for Weaver, Weaver's contract dictated that the PRT provide her with Darwin's bark spiders and other tools and materials needed to make both her own costumes and the costumes and garments she'd be supplying to the Wards, Protectorate, and possible the PRT's field agents. When Weaver demonstrated the ability to generate Weaver's Little Helpers and the quality of their silk, someone in supply and costuming had hastily canceled the order for the Bark Spiders... And Mister Hebert and his friend, Alan Barnes(who the PRT had, of course, had prior dealings with,) had immediately jumped on the breach of contract and argued further that garments made of Weaver's Adamant-Silk were of significantly greater quality and in significantly lower supply than the bark-spider silk garments that had been agreed upon, those making them exponentially more valuable.

Between the experianced union bureaucrat and the highly competent divorce lawyer helping him pro bono... Honestly trying to fight them on it would have cost more time and money than it was worth and would have negatively impacted the PRT's standing and relationship with the young girls in question. And now each of them had a significant pay raise, a moderate boost to their trust funds, all profits from their respective merchandise(added to their already inflated trusts), exceptions from some but not all medical tests that they might be required to take, and complete and total control and ownership of their names/identities, image, and all related properties and trademarks belonged to Danny Hebert to be passed onto Weaver on her sixteenth birthday(the day she'd have full control over her carreer descisions with the Wards) and Cuddlebug inheriting ownership of her own on her own sxteenth: Scientists in other offices had been begging for samples of the younger girl's 'symbiote' and of _Latrodectus heberticus_ and it's miracle silk and venoms but even if they could be replicated they'd need to get the girls' permision to produce the products and pay them royalties.

The director sighed again. Danny was fostering a Ward. He'd be getting a visit from the Youth Guard soon enough, and she could take vicarious pleasure in him having to deal with the resulting headache.

She began drafting a letter requesting that the main office grant a modest increase to ENE's annual budget to compensate for the hit that their emergency surplus was soon to take when a clerk called her and informed her that "the time travelers are here."

And that, along with a few more deaths at Nosferatu's hands, was the cause of her other most recent headache. The so-called Avengers, claiming to be time travelers from the future and with future versions of her two newest Wards among their number... Armsmaster's lie-detection software believed them to be truthful in their claims, for the most part, but it wasn't perfect yet and the Director wanted to see these heroes with her own eyes. She'd decide if she needed to invoke Master/Stranger Protocols then.

Director Piggot collected a few records for the sake of verification and made her way to one of the conference rooms to find that the alleged time travelers already sitting on one side of the table... Well, except for the future Cuddlebug. She was walking back and forth along the far wall... On the tips of her fingers. If Emily hadn't known that enhanced reflexes and agility were part of Cuddlebug's powers, she'd consider the fit teen's balance impressive.

When Piggot entered the room, without looking the gold and blue teen backflipped and landed in an empty chair next to the future Weaver, which then swiveled around so that the cape was facing the table.

Director Piggot took her own seat and within five minutes she was joined by Armsmaster and Miss Militia who took their seats on either side of her. The director was about to begin when a canister began to protrude from The Future Cuddlebug's body. The teen grabbed it and pulled it out with a plop, revealing a thermos that she'd somehow stored in her symbiote's biomass. "We noticed that there's no coffee in the pot back there," she said with a vague gesture to the table. Had this been a more normal, less formal meeting there would have been a hot pot of coffee and those cheap cooky/cracker things you sometimes see in office meetings on the table, just to keep everyone focused and content, but this wasn't exactly... "But we have a thermos, so if anybody would..."

"Cuddle?" Asked the reptilian girl to the gold and blue girl's left, "did you make the coffee yourself?"

"Yes."

The reptile, The Gremlin from Armsmaster's report, then looked directly at Piggot ant the two heroes beside her: "The answer is no, Cuddle's coffee will kill you." Then she blinked, revealing a third eyelid and scales on the normal two. "I'm not even joking, Cuddle's 'coffee' is triple-brewed espresso that uses Red Bull instead of water."

"...Regular coffee doesn't have enough caffeine for us," the teen said lamely.

"Okay," The Director said evenly, to try and get control of the room back, "before we begin I have the files for Weaver and Cuddlebug. Would the two of your care to answer a few questions that I'll check against 'your' files?" If this was some inept master/stranger attempt... the two, more familiar, capes nodded, and Piggot began.

"What are your names?"

She had not been expecting the two girls to unmask. Underneath her mask, Weaver was the spitting image of Taylor Hebert... except for being a touch older, her early twenties maybe? She had a few small scars and a mild tan, but otherwise... "My name is Taylor Anne Hebert."

The future Cuddlebug's mask just melted and was absorbed into her through her nostrils and eye sockets, something quite disturbing to watch but she didn't flinch. "We, er, I am Ashley O'Leary, I have a middle name too, but I've never actually heard it said out loud and it has a lot of syllables so if I tried to say it you'd get vaguely Asian sounding gibberish."

Director Piggot blinked, then threw open Cuddlebug's file... Yes, the girl had, in fact, signed her last name as O'Leary. "Uh..."

"My Grandpa was Irish," Future Ashley said. "Funny story, I only know that because when I was five I asked why he was a differant color than everybody else in the family. Grandpa Patrick was great, he introduced me to country music and taught me how to cheat at poker... Um, don't let Vista, uh, your Vista know about that."

"...Okay," the director said, "I think that enough is enough. I was going to ask more questions, but..." She'd only known Ashley for barely half a month and had had limited contact, but there was no faking that kind of behavior.

"Now," Weaver said, "I know what you want: you're concerned about us being in the city and what it means since we're essentially a foreign team trespassing on your turf and we haven't exactly done our best job of endearing ourselves to you. I'm going to be blunt: There are two serial killers, a psychopath, an alien sociopath, and two super-powered zombies trying to murder-or worse-two of your wards as well as four other individuals whose identities and current location I'm not at liberty to discuss." Weaver gave a brief smile. "My team knows how to deal with them, and we're going to do it. The PRT can help, they can do nothing and stay out of our way, or they can try and make things difficult for us. Personally, I hope it's one of the first two because I'm absolutely sick to my stomach of people on the same side fighting and making things hard for each other for bullshit reasons."

"Yeah," Future Cuddlebug chimed in, "enough of that happened in my universe." She then mumbled something about someone named Captain Marvel.

"You have questions, ask them, we'll answer to the best of our ability," future Weaver finished.

Piggot sighed again and looked at the capes at her sides. Miss Militia wouldn't act until prompted and would go along with whatever she decided, whether the fatigued Cape liked it or not. Armsmaster, on the other hand...

"We find it suspicious," the Protectorate leader began, "that one of you was able to create an antidote for a Bonesaw analog's drugs. This... Franny might have a slightly differant power, but-"

"The mutagen that ressulted in my current sstate," the gremlin said suddenly, "enhanced my intelligence to super-human levels. Creating formulass or technologiess on a level comparable to Tinker-tech iss child'ss play, esspecially with help from Cuddle." She blinked again. "And I have a vessted interesst in having counterss for any piece of Bonetech or ssimilar that we come acrosss."

"Your lisp is much more pronounced than it was the other day," Armsmaster noted.

"It actss up when people assk sstupid questionss" was the only reply.

"Armsmaster reported that Cuddlebug-"

"It's The Cuddle Cosmic now-"

"That Cuddle Cosmic mentioned being harvested for something called MGH," Piggot went on. "Our Cuddlebug has kept mum on what exactly happened to her, after the first night here that is. Knowing what exactly... If we know what happened, we can better help her get settled and cope with it." It was a half-truth. Psychological help was costly in time and money, and in a city like Brockton Bay, it wasn't something that could be easily fit into the schedule. Cuddlebug had been cleared by psych and a fear of needles wasn't exactly crippling, but if ENE suddenly got enough budget for better psychiatric care for the Wards or if something else forced her hand then yes, it'd be useful to know what was going on.

"It's a drug that is literally made from mutants," she said with a seriousness that was uncharacteristic of the younger Ashley, "that's all we're telling you and the next time you lie to our face like... It's not really conductive to this kind of thing." The girl opened her thermos, the smell of excessively strong and sweet coffee filling the room quickly. She then proceeded to chug the entire container in approximately a minute before replacing her mask and reabsorbing the thermos. "The only time we ever got anything close to psych care was when we made that little bastard from Alaska piss himself."

"That was awesome," The Gremlin jumped in, her lisp back under control, "for once, I thought you were _actually_ going to eat his brain."

"We honestly don't think he had a brain to eat."

At this point, Miss Militia spoke up. "I don't want to pry, but what exactly is a mutant?"

"Look, if I start explaining what a mutant is we'll be here all day. If you want to know so bad ask little Ashley, the gist of it is that I have a bigger genetic potential to develop superpowers-or super deficiencies-than normal humans back in my world, which manifested when I was little in a ridiculously high resistance to certain chemicals and being super yummy to klyntar."

"...Dost anyone else feels that this meeting is less than productive?" Claimed the Viking-Knight with the massive hammer. Honestly, considering her city's history, Piggot was less than trusting of a man who called himself Thor, but he hadn't done anything to set her off yet.

The so-called Sorceress, Maga, chimed in with a declaration: "Yeah, completely honest this is how I figured it would go. I'm literally only here because Boss Lady and Cutie Pie said I was here last time. I could be using this time to track down The Sinister Six or tell my past self to dump her boyfriend since he's probably cheating on her right now, or some other third thing." The Director was about to ask the final important question when Maga cut her off: "And um, Director? Asking which one of us, if any, are former villains... Pretty sure if one of us was, trying to make use answer that truthfully would be a violation of our fifth amendment rights, yeah? Not confirming or denying anything," she said while suddenly waving both hands around and pointing at the small red-skinned girl, Powerhouse.

"Fuck you too, Maga," the youth said with a grumble.

"Is that kind of language really appropriate for someone so..."

"I'm nineteen," Powerhouse answered. "I've been old enough to cuss like a sailor for over a year, fuck shit damn, and I'm gonna mother fucking use it if I so please, bitch."

"Yeah, PH looks all itty-bitty, but it's us and Grem-Grem who are the babies of this family," the future Cuddlebug said while rapping an arm around the scaled girl to her side and pulling her into a hug.

"Okay, this is another one of those times where we're veering off the rails," Weaver said all of a sudden, "we didn't goof off anywhere near this much, you asked differant questions last time... Can we just agree that we'd both rather help each other or stay out of each other's way than cause trouble? Because we kind of have to get ready, if Franny and Friends stay consistent they're gonna try to get past-Maga and some of her friends by taking the lunch rush at Fugly Bob's hostage and we'd like to head them off-Actually if you could lend us Triumph, he was there last time, so..." Weaver rotated her open hand a few times.

The director checked the expressions of the capes to her sides and then nodded. "If time is a concern then that sounds reasonable... Someone gasped a moment ago." Just a bit, when Weaver had mentioned an attack on Fugly Bob's.

The Cuddle Cosmic then reached straight up, her arms stretching unnaturally long, and pulled down what appeared to be blurs and ripples in empty space, which then shifted and the current Cuddlebug faded into view. Her ponytail was coated in her symbiote's biomass, but otherwise... She waved awkwardly. "Hi."

"Little tip, Mini-Mes," the big one said as she settled the little one on her lap, "don't move around until you've got the hang of symbiote camo or you figure out one of the real invisibility tricks. We mean, we knew you'd be there since we did the same thing last time, but we weren't even looking and we still saw you."

Once more, the director sighed. "I take it that this is how you knew how you behaved last time?"

"That," Weaver agreed, "and I bugged the room. Past me did it too," she said with a gesture to a couple of ants in the corner that Piggot hadn't notice.

"So Mini-Mes, why don't you go find your Weaver, tell her that thing you were gonna tell her before you got distracted by her telling you about that dream she had, then give her a great big hug?" Cuddle Cosmic said to her young doppelganger. "If she's anything like big Weaver, now's gonna be the best time."

"Okay," the little one said before leaving, though she gave a last nervous look to The Director before she parted.

Miss Militia began, "That was-"

"You can't really fault them for being curious about their futures," Maga interrupted, "Armsmaster, Director, I'm quite certain that each of you would have done similar things in their position."

"You're not wrong," Armsmaster admitted.

"Anyway," Weaver began with a hint of finality, "I think we're done here."

There was an exchange of pleasantries and then the future heroes vanished in a puff of smoke.

"Armsmaster?" The director asked.

"Same as last time," the Tinker replied, "in general they're reading as truthful but Future Weaver and The Gremlin occasionally give an inconclusive answer. Maga was lying outright with her claims of her past-self having a boyfriend and her implications that Power House was a former villain. Weaver's statement about the upcoming attack was read as an outright truth."

Director Piggot nodded. Honestly, she'd expected as much, but at least they had two data points instead of just the one to work with. She hummed as she noticed the ants in the corner seem to have a fit, instructed Armsmaster to relay instructions to Triumph, then returned to her office to finish some paperwork.


	19. Chapter 19

**The Opposite of Carnage**

"...So Wakanda just doesn't exist in this universe and never did?" Ashley asked. She was reading what looked like a Social Studies textbook. I peered over her shoulder to see that she was staring at a map of Africa.

"I guess not," I said with a shrug. I figured that Wakanda was some country in Africa, but otherwise, I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Weird," she said. "So far this book doesn't say anything about Antarctica-do the Savage Lands exist here?"

"Weaver," Gallant interrupted while looking up to us on the ceiling of Wards HQ. He, Ashley, Vista, Clockblocker, and I were the only ones here. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," I said calmly, "why?"

"Becuase there's a spider in the corner and it looks like it's having a seizure," he answered matter-of-factly. "And... I'm an emotion sensor, and yours are acting really, really odd."

"A spider having a seizure?" I asked. As creepy as it was sometimes, I liked having my swarms. Flexing my power, well, first power now, was soothing and I often found myself calmer when there were a lot of bugs in my control radius, as though they were carrying away my stress. But my possible future self... Our control radii overlapped, and she had some trick to instantly offload all of her unwanted emotions and only her unwanted emotions into a specific group of insects to instantly clear her mind. I'd noticed the other day when she offloaded a considerable amount of rage into a hornets' nest at the mention of Alexandria... I'm not sure I want to know why, but that seemed like a useful trick to have, so when I found out that I was on a team with a certain psychopath and that she knew who I was under my mask, well... I focused on the spider in the corner. It wasn't having a seizure, it was just acting out a portion of my panic... shunted it off to a roach in the walls two floors down, where it couldn't be noticed as easily. "Something spooked the little guy, but he should be fine now."

I didn't like that he kept looking up at me for a minute before saying "Okay," and going to talk to Vista about something. I tuned him out and turned back to Ashley.

"So, um, what's this wildlands things?"

"Oh," she said, "well, back around the time people were first exploring Antarctica, a guy stumbled down into a valley that was all warm, green, and not frozen. And it was full of real live dinosaurs! He named it the Savage Lands, and there's been a lot of exploring and researching their since." She explained in the existed tones of a child repeating the history of Disney World. "Apparently, like, seventy million years ago, some aliens installed some super advanced weather control technology and hid a nature preserve down there, then filled it up with dinosaurs to study but then they got bored and wandered off or something. Then it was discovered by explorers and stuff and studied and junk and now it's a nature preserve/amusement park."

I blinked behind my mask. "Yeah, there's nothing like that here as far as I know."

When Ashley learned that the other Wards knew my real name, she'd told the others hers. Thus, she didn't wear her mask in HQ, so I could easily see the odd look she was giving me as she asked: "So, what you're saying, is that in this universe there is no possible way for me to ride a real-life dinosaur?"

"No," I said, "sorry."

She frowned, pouted, looked angry for a minute, before settling on a blanked expression. "There is something fundamentally wrong with this universe," she said in a dull, even monotone.

"I agree with Cuddlebug," Clockblocker chimed in, "now that I know that there's a universe where you can ride dinosaurs, this one kind of feels like the lame one. Now I know what the people of Earth Aleph feel like."

"Seriously?" Vista asked, "Clock you can be so immature... Damn it, all I can think about now is riding a dinosaur."

"Then we're in agreement," Gallant declared, "we must find a way to travel to Cuddlebug's home universe so that we can ride the dinosaurs." I laughed, just a little.

"The Hell did we just walk in on?" I tried to hide the fact that I froze in her voice as well as I could.

"We're going to Cuddle Bug's universe," Vista said, "as soon as we can figure out how, because it has an amusement park with actual dinosaurs."

"That sounds amazing, I'm in" Kid Win said as he entered my line of sight.

"Kid," Shadow Stalker said without, "you and everything you say about your universe is weird."

"Nah-uh!" Ashley countered. "I refuse to believe that I'm the weird one in a universe where OJ played the Terminator, you haven't made contact with the Asgardians or Olympians yet, and Disney Broadway musicals aren't a thing."

"Whatever," Shadow Stalker dismissed. "By the way, they want you and Weaver in the briefing room on the third floor. Aegis is already there." She then walked around and went off to her room.

I exhaled and dropped down to the floor, landing on my feet. Ashley landed next to me and her symbiote oozed from her facial orifices to reform her mask.

"Wait a second," I said, "isn't there supposed to be an alarm so that we know to put our masks on?"

"...I'll call down and get someone on it," Gallant said from behind me. With that, Ashley and I left.

The elevator up to the third floor was slow. In the corner of my eye, I saw Ashley holding her hands in front of her face and repeatedly summoning and dismissing her claws.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to make our claws go 'snikt,' " she replied matter of factly. "Like Wolverine."

"The guy with the indestructible metal bones?" I asked. I think she'd mentioned him before.

"That's the one!"

She couldn't see it, but I smiled wistfully behind my mask. "Never let anyone break your spirit."

"Okay!" She got silent for a moment after that. "T-Weaver? Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"...Well, um... You got all quiet after I told you about Shadow Stalker and Big mes said to give you a hug when I told you... Is there some kind of problem with her?"

Damn it. "Look, let's just say that she... hurt me, but she'snot going to anymore, even if she wanted to. Okay?" I hoped that was true. I wasn't at Winslow long enough for her to do anything major, she hadn't really tried anything since I woke up from my Coma/Shamanistic vision, and I was leaving Winslow for good soon enough. Sophia wasn't stupid, she wouldn't come after me here at HQ where she could get caught.

"Okay," she said... She was shaking. I noticed a wide seam had formed in her mask, right over her mouth. Then she spoke and the seam opened up into a wide, lipless, cheekless maw full of far too many daggers like fangs and a far too long, forked tongue, "but if she hurts you again, we're going to eat her brain."

"...Ashley," I said, "never do that again."

"Do what?" she asked, everything suddenly back to normal.

"That thing with your mouth."

"What thing with my mouth?" She... what? "I mean, it felt kind of funny a second ago, but..."

I decided to table that discussion for now. Was... Was that something I needed to be worried about? Now I was kind of hoping I'd run into someone from Ashley's universe who wasn't an evil clone because I had questions regarding how symbiotes work.

"Anyway, I can handle Shadow Stalker if it comes to that, so don't worry about her, okay?" She nodded, and I tried to think of a way to change the subject. "You talk about how music and stuff is differant in your universe a lot," I said. She, and had tried to show me. Apparently, Earth Bet's pop culture had deviated from hers when Scion showed up and going by a music video of a sad country song that had been cross-posted to Youtube from Aleph's internet, hers was pretty close to Aleph, which was strange because from what she'd said her universe had deviated from Aleph in the mid-thirties. "Do you have a favorite movie?"

"Princess Bride," she said quickly. "Used to watch it with my Grandpa when I was sick and he was watching me..." She froze up, "Did it still get made here!?"

Well, I'd read a pre-scion book by that title that I think was made into a movie."...True love, fencing, adventure, Dread Pirates, miracles, political intrigue, and revenge?"

"Yeah," she said with palpable relief. The elevator had finally gotten to our floor.

"Okay, let's find out what they want us for."

"As you wish," was her reply.

She took my hand as we made our way to the briefing room, where we found Aegis standing before an administrative type person, an Agent at his side. We entered, and the administrator looked up.

"Good, you're all here," he said. He spoke like he didn't normally do this kind of thing. "First, before I start, I should say that Director Piggot wanted to handle this brief herself, but a few issues came up and The Deputy Director was unavailable to take his place. So I hope you don't mind if I'm brief with this briefing?" oh God, he was a joker. "Approximately," he looked at a wall clock, "twenty minutes ago, we received a call about an incident not unlike that which happened the night Cuddlebug and the 'clones' appeared, albeit on a much, much smaller and localized scale, down on the docks. Normally, knowing what we know about it, we'd have the Protectorate investigate, but they're all cooperating with the 'time travelers' deal with the 'Sinister Six.' " I resisted the urge to call the man out on his overuse of air quotes. "But at the same time, the policy is to have at least one cape on sight for this kind of investigation. So, if you're willing to potentially put yourselves at risk, we'd like to send you three, Aegis, Weaver, and Cuddlebug, along with Agent Smith's squad to investigate the incident and, if necessary, contain or engage in diplomacy with whoever might have entered our universe."

"I'll do it if Weaver does it," Ashley chimed in with almost immediately, which more or less tied my hands. If there was someone from her universe, well, with any luck it'll be someone she's heard of.

"I'm in."

"And I can't in good conscience say no after they've agreed," Aegis, our valiant leader, declared.

"Alright then," the man who desperately needed a name tag said, "Agent Smith will escort you down to the motor pool, you will ride along with his squad. He is in charge of this mission. If a member of the 'Sinister Six' appears, or if Agent Smith orders you to flee, you _will_ flee."

And with that, we left, following behind the currently silent Agent Smith.


	20. Author's Note

Yeah... Sorry, there are problems with this story, both that I have and some readers have mentioned.

There's a rewrite in progress. After thinking it over, I figure that a full rewrite is the best way to handle things.

The first chapter of the revision has already been posted: Look for Snuggles the Symbiote.


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